VI. On the nerves of the face; being a second paper on that subject

Abstract

I Have to beg the indulgence of the Society to some minute details of anatomy, for the sake of those deductions which can be attained by no other means: and that a zeal for its cultivation may be preserved among us. There is an obvious practical benefit derived from anatomy, but the public do not comprehend its importance as a science. It is to the Royal Society that those who prosecute this science must look for countenance in their slow and painful investigations. Nine years ago, at the request of our late President, I submitted to the Society a paper on the Nervous System; in which I arranged the nerves strictly according to the anatomy, and illustrated the principles of the arrangement, by exhibiting the different functions of the Nerves of the Face. On presenting a second paper on the same part of the nervous system after so considerable a lapse of time, there will be some novelty both in the facts and in the illustrations; yet I have more gratification in showing that after the most minute inquiries in different countries, my positions drawn from the anatomy have been admitted, and my reasoning on the experiments, with one exception, found to be correct. Confident in the accuracy of my deductions from the anatomy of the fifth nerve, I had attributed to one of its branches a function which belongs to another branch of the same nerve. The subject will form a part of the present paper.