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"The sympathy, therefore, or consent observed between the nerves of various parts of the body, is not to be explained mechanically, but ought to be ascribed to the energy of that sentient being, which seems in a peculiar manner to reside in the brain, and, by means of the nerves, moves, actuates, and enlivens the whole machine."

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Author

Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Work Title

An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals

Place of Publication

Edinburgh

Publisher

Printed by Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill

Date

1751

Metaphor

"The sympathy, therefore, or consent observed between the nerves of various parts of the body, is not to be explained mechanically, but ought to be ascribed to the energy of that sentient being, which seems in a peculiar manner to reside in the brain, and, by means of the nerves, moves, actuates, and enlivens the whole machine."

Metaphor in Context

[...] Further, as the nerves of the inspiratory muscles and lungs, most certainly do not terminate precisely in the same part of the brain, but probably in places somewhat distant from each other, any sympathy that obtains between them, as proceeding from one common origin, must be owing to something equally present in these several places, i.e., to the mind or sentient principle: for without supposing some percipient being in the brain, how can an irritation of the extremities of the nerves, taking their rise from one part of the brain, occasion a more than ordinary derivation of spirits into such nerves as have their origin from a different part? If external objects act on the nerves only, by putting a stop to the equable progression of their fluid, or by exciting some vibratory motions in them, how can any of these occasion, not only a more copious derivation of spirits through the nerves thus affected, but also through a variety of other nerves with which they have no connexion, and whose rise is from a different part of the brain? The sympathy, therefore, or consent observed between the nerves of various parts of the body, is not to be explained mechanically, but ought to be ascribed to the energy of that sentient being, which seems in a peculiar manner to reside in the brain, and, by means of the nerves, moves, actuates, and enlivens the whole machine.
(Sect. VIII, pp. 182-3)