Following Fritsch and Hitzig's landmark 1870 paper describing their stimulation and ablation experiments on the cortex of the dog showing movements including convulsive movements contralateral to frontal stimulation, and contralateral paresis following ablation. Beginning in the early 1870s Ferrier, working at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum on a variety of animals performed more detailed experiments and mapped out the entire motor cortex and also stimulated other areas, for example, the superior temporal gyrus, which he concluded is involved in hearing. It is interesting that he initially did not acknowledge the priority of Fritsch and Hitzig. He published some of his findings in the West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports, and summarized all of his studies to date in his major work, this book.