Volume 1

Elements of physiology : for the use of students, and with especial reference to the wants of practitioners / Tr. from the German, with additions by Robert Willis.

  • Wagner, Rudolph, 1805-1864.
Date:
1841-2
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of physiology : for the use of students, and with especial reference to the wants of practitioners / Tr. from the German, with additions by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    present very similar forms (fig. III. 1—9); hut they arc gene- rally larger than in man, and this more especially among the smallest animals: in the genus Mus they are perhaps larger than in any other family; in the rat, for example (fig. III. 7.), they are of the -r^ih of a line, and perhaps more, in length; the body measures from the -r^th to the -o-o-jyth of a line; the tail is here thick and strong, and easily traced to its extremity. The foi'ms of the body, or -anterior thicker end of the sperma- tozoa, are manifold: in apes (fig. III. 1) these animalcules resemble those of the human subject; they are only somewhat larger: in the mole (fig. III. 3) they are longer; they are more pyriform, but also greatly flattened and very various, both in figm'e and size, in the dog (fig. III. 4), in the rabbit (fig. III. 5), in the roebuck (fig. III. 9), and still more in the genus Mus:—in the rat (fig. III. 7) thc' body posteriorly is sickle-shaped, arched, and ex- tremely compressed, but long; the tail springs more from the upper and back part of the body ; a great general resemblance to this last form is apparent in the spermatozoon of the common mouse (fig. III. 6), only the body is shorter; the point above, merely indicated and scarcely bent, resembles, when viewed from the side, a round-edged scalpel (a); the body is deepened pos- teriorly where the root of the tail is set on (b); these particulars ai'e still more strongly seen in the field-mouse (fig. III. 8, A), the body cviles exhibit a yellowish, even an amljer, tint. Perhaps this is a mere effect of refraction. As a remarkable departure fi'om the normal form, I have upon two occasions observed the caudal end of the body double, bifid, or forked; I do not imagine that I was deceived in these cases. Once, too, the body appeared to be double, as in a bicephalous monster; it was attached to the bifid or forked root of the tail, and grew together or was connected along the middle line ; this ob- servation, however, was not so complete as to leave me free from doubts as to its absolute accuracy. Fig. II. Fig. II.—Semen from the testicle of a man magnified from nine hundred to one thou- sand times :—a, a large roundish corpuscule; 6,globuleof evolution, a cyst which encloses three roundish graiuilar bodies ; c, a bundle of seminal animalcules, as they are grou])ed together in the testicle.