William Hunter : physician, anatomist, founder of the Hunterian Museum ; The Hunterian Library / by John Young, M.D., Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Glasgow and Keeper of the Hunterian Museum.

  • John Young
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: William Hunter : physician, anatomist, founder of the Hunterian Museum ; The Hunterian Library / by John Young, M.D., Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Glasgow and Keeper of the Hunterian Museum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    but the normal lining membrane of the uterus modified to- meet a special duty. He did not attempt to explain how the ovum became embedded in this layer, it is not explained yet: he was content with the appearance which occasioned the phrase decidua refiexa, and left the further problem to the future. What he saw and understood he told clearly,, and nothing of what he told has been found wrong. Some things he failed to see, and erred in consequence: thus he said there was no allantois, an error which younger embryos would have saved him from. The same fatal limit to knowledge which left his comprehension of absorp- tion incomplete was in the way of his understanding of the mechanism whereby the foetus draws nourishment: and even yet the microscopy of to-day fails to make clear the respective shares of the epithelial layers; but, at any rate, no one now need think of the foetus imbibing the amniotic fluid. The felicitous comparison of the foetus to a plant, with its roots bathed in the fluids of the parent, is one of uncertain origin, at any rate its employment by Hunter shows how utterly he had in view the distinctness of the two streams. The preparations in the Museum attest the thoroughness with which the investigation had been planned and carried on. Yet this is the work by which he has suffered most in subsequent records. Coste is the author to whom in the first instance we are indebted for the correct presentation of his views. Left at his death incomplete, his MS. passed into Baillie’s hands, and he “ with diffidence attempted ” to compensate the deficiency. Hence William Hunter has been made responsible for the opinion that the outer layer of the membranes is, in John’s words, “ an exudation of lymph from the vessels of the uterus due to the stimulus of impregnation.” William’s own words, in his introductory lecture, are “ the internal membrane of the uterus which I have named decidua constitutes the exterior part of the secundines or after-birth: and separates from the rest of uterus every time that a woman either bears a child or suffers a miscarriage.” The vital connection of parent B
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