Anniversary oration delivered ... before the Medical Society of London, on the general structure and physiology of plants, compared with those of animals, and the mutual convertibility of their organic elements / [John Mason Good].

  • Good, John Mason, 1764-1827.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anniversary oration delivered ... before the Medical Society of London, on the general structure and physiology of plants, compared with those of animals, and the mutual convertibility of their organic elements / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    V able to trace the existence of a great mul¬ titude of valves, by the action of which the apertures of the lymphatics are commonly found closed. Whether the other systems of vegetable vessels possess the same me¬ chanism, we have not been able to determine decisively; the following experiment, how¬ ever, should induce us to conclude that they do. If we take the stern of a common bal- samine*, or of various other plants, and cut it horizontally at its lower end, and plunge it, so cut, into a decoction of Brazil-wood, or any other coloured fluid, we shall per¬ ceive that the arteries or adducent vessels, as also the air-vessels, will become filled or in¬ jected by an absorption of the coloured li¬ quor, but that the veins, or reducent vessels, will not become filled ; of course evin¬ cing an obstacle, in this direction, to the ascent of the coloured fluid. But if we in¬ vert the stem, and in like manner cut hori¬ zontally the extremity which till now was uppermost, and plunge it so cut into the same fluid, we shall then perceive that the \ * Impatiens lalsamina:—This is the plant recom¬ mended by M. Willdenowfor this purpose, as affording the clearest results.