The Harveian oration, 1880 : delivered June 25th / by John W. Ogle.

  • Ogle, John W. (John William), 1824-1905.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Harveian oration, 1880 : delivered June 25th / by John W. Ogle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/224 (page 17)
    Dr. Bell Pettigrew has described the existence of an open- ing between the ventricles in some of the snakes, and has figured it in a paper, “On the Valves of the Vascular System ; and Professor Owen informs me that the Chelonian reptiles are instances of intercommunicating foramina, or passages in the substance of the ventricles of a four-cavitied heart.f There is also in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons a preparation of the heart of a serpent {PythonTigris), showing the incomplete character of the wall dividing the aortic from the pulmonary chamber of the ventricle, and these intercommunicate by several apertures of different sizes near the apex of the ventricle. J Galen’s therapeutical and anatomical views held sway through the middle ages, amidst all the conflicting teaching and philosophical controversy of the different schools of Medicine and Philosophy, and through all the social and national fluctuations which the world experienced and (in spite of the fact that at the end of the thirteenth century human dissection was permitted), until the time of Vesalius, the founder of Descriptive Anatomy, and Servetus, in the middle of the sixteenth century. In the meantime, howeven it may be mentioned that the word capillaries''' had been applied to the small vessels of the liver by a teacher of the famous Benedictine school of Salerno (12), the ^civitas Hippo- * See Trans. Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, 1864. + This structure is figured in Owen’s “ Anat. of Vertebrates,” vol. i., p. 5^0, %• 337. On the same page is a figure of the heart of a more active, though cold-blooded reptile, the crocodile, in which, though the septum ventriculorum is imperfect, that between the beginnings of the aorta and pulmonary artery is perforated, allowing circulation of mixed blood when the animal chooses to remain sub- merged. In a letter to myself Professor Owen observes of it : “When actually respiring air the semilunar valves are so disposed as temporarily to close the inter-arterial orifice, and the crocodile has the advantage of the cardiac character of the mammal.” All will be familiar with instances of like conditions of the chambers of the heart in man as a result of malformation, &c. We are indebted to our Fellow Dr. Peacock for much information regarding such. + Preparation described in catalogue as 917 B. C