Page:The Hunterian Oration1843.djvu/13

 of that system are appropriated to the exercise of different functions,

Valuable practical precepts were immediately deduced from these discoveries, and at once applied by Sir Charles Bell and Mr. John Shaw. Perhaps the most important was the distinction of a local paralyticaffection from that which depends on disease of the brain. I shall not detain you with cases of this kind, which, since the introduction of this new principle in the recognition and diagnosis of nervous diseases, have been accumulated in the records of medicine. The doctrine, however, and the conse- quences which ignorance of it occasioned, are well illustrated by a remarkable anecdote in a work where we should not be apt to look for physiological instruction, | mean Grimm’s Correspondence ; and as the story is little known, I will take the liberty of narrating it:

A physician in Paris, on paying his visit one day, found an Abbé playing at cards in his patient’s cham- ber. Struck by the unfavourable aspect of the Abbé’s face, he informed him that he had not a moment to lose, but must be carried home instantly. The Abbé, overpowered with terror, was taken to his lodgings, where, for several days, he was _ bled, cupped, and purged, till he was brought to the brink of the grave; yet his face still bore the ap- pearance which had so much alarmed the physician. The brother of the patient at length arrived from a distant part of France, and asked what was the matter with his unfortunate relation. ‘“ Don’t you see,” said the bystanders, “‘ his mouth is all on one