The hand: its mechanism and vital endowments as evincing design / By Charles Bell.

  • Bell, Charles, Sir, 1774-1842.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hand: its mechanism and vital endowments as evincing design / By Charles Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of rock, and at a time when the earth’s surface must have been in a condition very different from what it is now. These remains prove that this animal must have been formed of the same elements constituent as those of the present day, that it had analogous organs — received new matter by digestion, and was nourished by means of a circulating fluid—possessed feeling through a nervous system, and was moved by the action of muscles : and with regard to the animals that lived at the same period, we may infer that their organs of digestion, circulation, and respiration were modified by circumstances, and in accordance with their habits and modes of living, as in the animals now alive. Such changes in the organs are but variations in the system by which new matter is assimilated to the animal body,—and however remarkable they may be, they always bear a certain relation to the original type, as parts of the same great design. In examining these bones of the ancient world, so regularly are they formed on the same principle which is evident in the animals now inhabiting the earth, that by observing their shape, and the processes* by which their muscles were attached, we can reduce the animals to * Processes are the projecting parts of bone by which the tendons of the muscles are attached. The processes, therefore, to the anatomist are indications of the conditions of tlie muscles.