Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/355

BROWNSON 349 respective sensitive and motor functions of the anterior and posterior roots of the spinal cord, directed the attention of physiologists to that subject. After numerous and apparently con- tradictory experiments, the conclusion was generally acquiesced in that the posterior col- umns of the cord are sensitive, and convey sen- sations to the brain ; that the anterior are mo- tor, and convey the influence of the will to the voluntary muscles ; and that the gray matter of the cord serves merely to reflect impressions from the sensitive to the motor nerve roots. As the result of numerous ingenious experi- ments, Brown-Sfiquard concludes that the sen- sitive fibres do not communicate directly with the brain, but convey impressions to the gray matter of the cord, by which they are trans- mitted onward to the brain, and that their de- cussation or crossing takes place in the cord itself, at or near the point at which they en- ter, not in the cerebrum or medulla oblongata. On the other hand, the anterior or motor fibres pass on directly to the brain, effecting their decussation in the medulla oblongata ; the gray matter receives the impressions, conducts them to the brain, or reflects them upon the motor nerves, but is itself insensible to ordinary stim- uli. These views enable us to understand some rare and curious facts in pathology which otherwise would remain inexplicable. Other researches of Brown-Sfiquard relate to the muscles, to the sympathetic system of nerves, to the effect of the removal or destruction of the supra-renal capsules in animals, &c. In May, 1858, he delivered a course of lectures on the nervous system before the royal college of sur- geons at London, which attracted much at- tention. In 1864, having taken up his resi- dence in the United States, he was appointed professor of the physiology and pathology of the nervous system in the medical department of Harvard university, a position which he held till 1868. In 1869, becoming again a resi- dent of France, he was appointed professor of experimental and comparative pathology in the school of medicine at Paris. In 1858 he founded the Journal de la physi'ologie de Fhomme et de animaux, which he made from the beginning a leading journal of physiology, and which he continued to conduct as editor till 1863. On his return to France in 1869 he established the Archives de la physiologie nor- male et pathologique, a journal of similar standing with the preceding. He has been a frequent contributor of scientific articles to the journals under his charge, and has also been much engaged as consulting physician for dis- eases of the nervous system. In 1873 he estab- lished himself as a practitioner in New York, and in conjunction with Dr. E. 0. Seguin began the publication of a medical journal entitled "Archives of Scientific and Practical Medicine." BBOWSSON, Orestes Augustus, LL. D., an Amer- ican author, born at Stockbridge, Vt., Sept. 16, 1803. In his 19th year he joined the Pres- byterian church at Ballston, N. Y., where he was at the time attending an academy ; but he afterward changed his views, and became in 1825 a Universalist minister. He preached in different villages of Vermont and New York, and wrote for various religious periodicals in support of his new belief. His ecclesiastical position had grown into disfavor with him, when, making the acquaintance of Robert Owen, he was fascinated by schemes of social reform, and in 1828 he was prominent in tho formation of the working men's party in New York, the design of which was to relieve the poorer classes by political organization ; but he presently despaired of the effectiveness of this movement. Afterward the writings of Dr. Ohanning drew his attention to the Unitarians, and in 1832 he became pastor of a congregation of that denomination. In 1836 he organized in Boston the " Society for Christian Union and Progress," of which he retained the pas- torate till he ceased preaching in 1843. Im- mediately after removing to Boston he publish- ed his " New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church," remarkable for its protest against Protestantism. In 1838 he established the " Boston Quarterly Review," of which he was proprietor, and almost sole writer, during the five years of its separate existence, and to which he contributed largely during the first year after it was merged in the " Democratic Review " of New York. It was designed not to support any definite doctrine, but to awaken thought on great subjects, with reference to speedy and radical changes. To this end also he published in 1840 " Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted," a philosophico-religious treatise, in the form of a novel. In 1844 he entered the Roman Catholic communion, to which he has since remained attached. The method which he adopts in his philosophical system is the distinction between intuition (di- rect perception) and reflection (indirect or re- flex knowledge). The mind is unconsciously intuitive ; it does not, in intuition, know that it has intuition of this or that truth, because as soon as it knows or is conscious of the intuition it has reflex knowledge. Reflection can con- tain nothing which is not first in intuition. In order to reflect on that which we know intui- tively, we must have some sensible sign by which the mind may apprehend or take hold of it. Such a sign is language, both in the or- dinary and figurative sense of the word, which thus holds in the metaphysics of Mr. Brownson a place corresponding to. that which tradition holds in his religious system. The knowledge of God, he maintains, is intuitive. The ideal element of every intellectual act is God creat- ing creatures, ens creat existentiai. The later publications of Mr. Brownson are " The Spirit Rapper " (1854), " The Convert, or Leaves from my Experience " (1857), and "The American Republic" (1865). From 1844 he supported almost single-handed, in Boston and New York, " Brownson's Quarterly Review," de- voted especially to the defence of Roman Cath-