On congenital fistulae of the trachea : A pathologico-therapeutic commentary ... / Translated ... by R. Knox.

  • Dzondi, Carl Heinrich, 1770-1835
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On congenital fistulae of the trachea : A pathologico-therapeutic commentary ... / Translated ... by R. Knox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE BY THE EDITOR, The Monographs of the celebrated Dzondi and Ascherson “ on the ves¬ tiges of foetal and embryonic structures persisting in the adult,” carefully translated, are sufficiently interesting to entitle them to accompany the beau¬ tiful memoirs of Autenreith and Eischer, now in course of publication in this work. Besides illustrating some points of great interest in practical surgery, their perusal, it is hoped, may afford matter for serious reflection on the slow progress of philosophical anatomy in England, Germany, and even in France. The distinguished Dzondi, so eminent as a praetical surgeon, appears to have been ignorant, in 1829, of the scientific labours of his illustrious predecessors and contemporaries—Oken, Spix, Goethe, Trevianus, and a host of others ; whilst the acute and learned Tiedemann, writing in the midst of all the philo¬ sophical anatomy of his day, describes, in his great work on the arteries, the supra-condyloid process of the humerus in man as a certain osseous tubercle occasionally present in the human humerus. Yet, long before the appearance of either of these works, the great doctrine of organization had been fully established—human anomalies having been traced through embryology to that great law—and the domain of the “ Lusus Naturae”, and of “ things wonderful, mysterious, and inexplicable,” had been greatly limited. From a total neglect of “original authors” and “ Monographs”, and from a thoroughly national contempt for theory (involving most frequently first laws or principles), it, without doubt, happens that our own country is generally the last in admit¬ ting any “ a priori ” reasoning in science ; but even after makiiig'every possible allowance for this national antipathy to principles, it must still startle us to find an English, nay a London, anatomist, as late as 1846—7, speak of the same supra-condyloid process in the language of Tiedemann. The philosophic theories here alluded to were, it is true, neither of London, nor yet of English growth—a consideration which must ever influence a practical man and in their nature they are abstruse, not being adapted to the capability ot all com¬ prehensions. But however this may be, we venture to recommend these and other Mono¬ graphs (about to introduced) to the attention of the profession, reminding them of the waste of wmrds, of idle cavil, and dispute, which would have been avoided ; of the unfounded claims to discovery which never could have been obtruded, had the original works of original authors been in their possession ; and had they been in the habit of referring to, and studying them, with that attention and care the importance of their contents renders imperative — Ed.