Disquisitiones de structura protuberantia annularis sive pontis Varolii. Untersuchungen über den Bau des Hirnknotens oder der Varoli’schen Brucke. Text and atlas.

Stilling’s great work on the pons Varolii, the structure that links the brain to the spinal cord, includes the first accurate description of the red nucleus (superior olive), a structure in the midbrain involved in motor coordination. According to Stilling’s fellow neurologist Robert Remak, Stilling’s 1846 discovery of the red nucleus “supplied the first demonstration of the connection of multipolar cells with motor fibers” (E. Clarke and L. S. Jacyna, Nineteenth-Century Origins of Neuroscientific Concepts, p. 87). Stilling’s work on the pons, with bilingual Latin and German text, was issued under the general title Disquisitiones de structura et functionibus cerebri / Untersuchungen über den Bau und die Verrichtigungen des Gehirns. It was apparently intended to serve as the first volume in a series; however, no further volumes were published.