The gastro-intestinal tract in monotremes and marsupials / by William Colin MacKenzie.

  • Mackenzie, Colin, 1877-1938.
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The gastro-intestinal tract in monotremes and marsupials / by William Colin MacKenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/122
    diet of vegetable matter, whose abdominal contents re- semble those of man, and who shares with him, the higher anthropoids, and the Echidna, the possession of a true vermiform appendix. With such diversity of intestinal type limited to a single order, one might have imagined that these animals would have formed the basis of the numerous investiga- tions now being conducted all over the world on the functions of the human stomach and intestine. Surelv t/ before the large intestine was condemned as a u useless organ ” some consideration might have been given to the intestinal experiments amongst the marsupials, and especially to the structural relations of the gastro-intes- tine in the Carnivorous Marsupials. For the study of intestinal muscle tone, one could not imagine a more hopeful field than the intestinal tracts of Echidna, Wom- bat, and Koala. Yet it is extremely doubtful if a single X-ray examination has ever been made of even the marsupial stomach. This work, though structural, has been written from the point of view of function. Every illustration has been designed with the idea of throwing some light on the structure and function of the human gastro-intestine. A further work on similar lines, dealing with the Liver, Spleen, Gall Bladder, and Panacres, is now in the press. In the author’s opinion, researches on comparative anatomy should have some direct bearing on the structural and functional anatomy of the human frame; otherwise they are of onlv academic interest. The visceral histology of Monotremes and Marsupials has been completed by William Owen and myself, and will be published at a later date. The com- plete histology of the Gastro-Intestinal Tracts in Mono- tremes and Marsupials is now available at the writer’s private laboratories in Melbourne for students wishing to undertake researches on the subject. It is lamentable that in a rich country like Australia -the only country where these fast disappearing relics of man’s past are to be found—there is not a solitary