From the Archives

‘It seems at first strange, not to say unaccountable, that the centres of sensation and perception are themselves devoid of sensibility or sensitivity, and may be cut, lacerated, burnt, or otherwise injured, without the slightest indication of local suffering being manifested.’ But, as Ferrier goes on to explain, those organs that do give rise to pain when injured, have peripheral end-organs and nerve terminations that are capable of stimulation; and they are connected by nerve trunks to neural centres. Sensation depends on these three elements being in continuity. Thus, there are no sensory ‘nerves’, merely sensory ‘apparatus’ consisting of peripheral organ, nerve and centre. As George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) put it in Problems of Life and Mind (1874–1879) where,