Note 838 — Chapter V · (continued 3)

Some writers, who have taken notice of Cullen, have been deceived in this respect by his occasional use of the expression ‘nervous fluid,’ as if he were willing to let in the idea of humorism. But, in one place, he distinctly guards himself against such misconstruction. ‘Now, to avoid determining any thing with regard to these opinions, I have used the term of nervous power; but as this is a little ambiguous, I choose to express it by nervous fluid; not that I suppose, with Dr. Boerhaave, that the brain is an excretory, and that a fluid is secreted from it: I mean nothing more than that there is a condition of the nerves which fits them for the communication of motion. But I defer the consideration of these opinions for the present, and perhaps ad Græcas calendas; but nothing shall be rested upon the nervous fluid, it shall be considered merely as a power fitted for communicating motions.’ Cullen's Works, vol. i. p. 17. Without this passage, his remarks on ‘the nervous fluid in the brain’ (Works, vol. i. p. 129), might easily be misunderstood.