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CONTENTS OF No. XLVII.

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On an Almost Unknown Function of the Pancreas, the Digestion of Nitrogenous Food.

LUCIEN CORVISART

ART. II.—Ou Poisons in Relation to Medical Jurisprudence and Medicine. By ALFRED S.
TAYLOR, M.D., &c. Second Edition

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THE

BRITISH AND FOREIGN

MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL REVIEW.

JULY, 1859.

PART FIRST.

Analytical and Critical Reviews.

REVIEW I.

Course of Lectures on the Physiology and Pathology of the Central Nervous System, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in May, 1858, by E. BROWN-SEQUARD, M.D. Illustrated by numerous Engravings, representing the principal Experiments and Pathological Cases. (From the Lancet,' 1858–59).

In a Lecture delivered by Schiller at Jena in 1789, on the study of Universal History, the poet draws a striking contrast between the empiric " or trader in science," and the "real philosopher" or lover of wisdom; and in no respect is that contrast more remarkable or more true, than as to the reception which each gives to new discoveries, Of the former he remarks, "Every extension of the boundaries of the science by which he earns his bread is regarded by him with anxiety, since it occasions him fresh labour, or renders his former labours useless; every important innovation or discovery alarms him, for it breaks down those old school formulæ which he had taken so much pains to acquire it endangers the entire produce of the toil and trouble of his whole previous life." On the other hand, "new discoveries in the field of his activity, which depress the trader in science, enrapture the philosopher. Perhaps they fill a chasm which the growth of his ideas had rendered more wide and unseemly, or they place the last stone, the only one wanting to the completion of the structure of his ideas. But even should they shiver it into ruins,-should a new series of ideas, a new aspect of Nature, a newlydiscovered law in the physical world, overthrow the whole fabric of his knowledge,— he has always loved Truth better than his system, and gladly will he exchange an old and defective form for a new and fairer one."

We have thought it not inappropriate to call the attention of our readers to the noble sentiment we have italicized, by way of preface to the enquiry through which we purpose to conduct them, as to the merits of the most important among the numerous sets of researches carried on by one of the most distinguished experimental physiologists of, our time,-namely, those investigations into the Physiology and Pathology of the Nervous System, of which M. Brown-Séquard gave an account (with

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