A lecture introductory to the course of anatomy and physiology, delivered in the Medical School, Aldersgate Street, London, upon the opening of the session, 1832 / by Robert Bentley Todd.

  • Todd, Robert Bentley, 1809-1860.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture introductory to the course of anatomy and physiology, delivered in the Medical School, Aldersgate Street, London, upon the opening of the session, 1832 / by Robert Bentley Todd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    termed glands make their first appearance; they are des- tined for the secretion of fluids which aid in the digestive process. A very important and new class of parts and functions are first met with among this genus; I mean those which, as immediately concerned in conferring the senses, are called organs of sense. Those of sight and hearing are undoubtedly found in these animals; to the simple conformation of one of which 1 have already had occasion to allude. The next genus which we meet with as we descend in our scale is that of the molluscous animals, in which we find a considerable advance in each of the classes of organs already alluded to. Here we first find a true heart, differing from that of crustacea, in consisting of two portions or cavities,—one for the reception of the returned blood, the other for transmission. It is among the Cephalopoda of the Mollusca that we first meet with a brain; and among them, too, we first find a cra- nium. A more perfect nervous system then characterises these animals, and they afford us the earliest traces of a skeleton. The series of animals which complete the scale exhibit the grand distinctive feature of the possession of an internal skeleton, a basis upon which the other parts may rest, and in which cavities may be formed for the protection of organs whose integrity is essential to the continuance of life; and here, too, we find a gradation well worthy of notice,—as well in structure, as in the number of parts. As regards the one, we see the transition from the soft and flexible cartilaginous skeleton of some fishes, to the hard osseous one of the mam- malia; and in the other, we pass from the skeleton consisting of merely the head and vertebral column, with incomplete thorax, to the perfect skeleton of birds and mammalia, com- plete in its cavities and appendages. Various changes and additions in organization are to be noticed as we pass successively through the classes of fishes, reptiles, and birds, to the most highly organised and most per- fect class, the mammalia, which are distinguished from all the rest of the animal series by their mode of nourishing their young by teats or mammae. A distinct post among these animals is allotted to man, whose erect posture and upright n