Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/18

 the latter we get an insight into the complexity of nervous functions, and therefore to assume that the standard of these functions is to be made in the laboratory, and all beside considered abnormal, is to shut the light from our eyes. With the exception of the experiments of Waller and Bouchard, little had, until quite lately, been taught the student beyond the notion that afferent and efferent nerves were so many telegraphic wires proceeding to and from the centres; but when he enters the wards of of a hospital and witnesses cases of disease, and sees the muscles becoming atrophied, when one nerve is destroyed and the skin undergoing changes, when another nerve is irritated, he discovers that these cords have other functions; he no longer regards them as mere conducting wires, but rather as active organs conveying a distinct nutritive influence over the body, and sees with the mind's eye a perpetual stream of energy coursing through the system, or alternately ebbing and flowing in hysteria and other similar nervous disorders.

Then, again, some of our members are engaged in the important department of mental alienation, a department necessitating the study of the mind