On the art of injecting blood-vessels / by Professor Harting.

Date:
[1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the art of injecting blood-vessels / by Professor Harting. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    / ON THE ART OF INJECTING BLOOD-VESSELS. BY PROFESSOR HARTING, OF UTRECHT. [from the monthly journal of medical science, for march 1852.] [The old Dutch anatomists were long famous for their skill in preparing in- jected anatomical specimens; and in this country it is generally believed that they either altogether concealed the nature of the processes which they followed, or, by the affectation of mystery, deterred imitators from repeating them. It is not so in modern times. Ruysch has worthy followers in Schroeder van .der Kolk and Harting ; and thanks to their enlightened spirit, the art of injecting, as practised at Utrecht, is no secret. We have great satisfaction in transferring to our pages the following translation of the chapters on “ Injection of Vessels,” from Harting’s great work “ Het Mikroskoop.”] The injecting of the finest vessels with coloured materials affords an assistance absolutely indispensable for the microscopical study of the anatomy of animal organs. Indeed it is impossible in any other way to convince one’s self of the mode of distribution, course, nay, very existence, of the most minute capillaries, as these are in fact very seldom found full of blood, and even when this is the case, the transparency of the blood-corpuscles is so great, that they can only be distinctly seen at points where they, or the containing vessel, are well isolated. Any one who has taken much trouble thoroughly to investigate the structure of an organ, but without injecting its bloodvessels, will learn, on continuing his observations with the assistance of well injected preparations, that his first ideas of the struc- ture were most incomplete and inaccurate. .Injection not only shows the course of the vessels, but, as this is always intimately connected with other tissues, serves to unfold their nature and relations ; the whole picture becomes more com- prehensible—more plastic, which is in great measure due to the strong contrast between the tissues and the colouring materials used for the injection. Indeed a successful injection never fails to make a vivid impression upon the eye which SUTHERLAND AND KNOX, GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH