Copy 1, Volume 1

The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good].

  • Good, John Mason, 1764-1827
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Improved from the author's manuscripts, and by reference to the latest advances in physiology, pathology, and practice / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    60/784 (page 6)
    : Compara- tive length of the ali- mentary canal, Buccal pouch. (Esopha- gus, sto- mach, and intestines. Rumina- tion. PHYSIOLOGICAL PROEM. ~ mammalia, than in the subordinate classes. It diminishes succes- sively in birds, amphibia, and fishes; being in some fishes even three classes ; and in insects and worms is so diversified, as almost to bid defiance to any kind of scientific arrangement; being, in many instances, short and narrow, as in the dragon-fly (Jibellula) ; and in others, as proper hydatids and infusory worms, constituting the globular membrane in which the entire structure of the animal consists. [On the whole, a long and complicated intestinal tube denotes, that the insect feeds on vegetables; while the contrary character indicates that its food is animal. So capricious has nature been in the lower beings that, in the animals of corals and sponges, the intestines of several individuals frequently communi- nutriment of all is derived from a common source.* ] Attached to the cheeks in some quadrupeds, as the monkey and marmot tribes, is a pouch or pocket, which conveniently holds their spare food, or enables them to convey it to their winter hoards. The mouth communicates with the stomach by the long, narrow, membranous and muscular canal, denominated the cesophagus, or gullet. This in many animals is so dilatable, as to enable them to swallow animals more bulky than themselves. [In those carnivo- rous animals which swallow voraciously, as the wolf, it is very large; but, in many herbivorous ones, of considerable size, and particularly such as ruminate, its muscular fibres are proportionably stronger, and capable of voluntary motion. The process of rumin- ation implies a power of voluntary motion in the cesophagus ; and indeed the influence of the will throughout the whole operation is incontestable. _It-is-not confined to any particular time; since the animal can delay it, according to circumstances, when the paunch is quite full. In the occasional examples of the power of rumin- ation in man, the operation is also found to ke voluntary. The opening of the cesophagus into the stomach is marked by some differences, both with regard to its size and mode of termination: circumstances explaining why some animals, as the dog, easily vomit; while others, as the horse, are scarcely susceptible of this place through the mouth by the complete manner, in which this cavity admits of being separated from the gullet by the velum palati. ] We have not time to follow up these playful diversities of nature; and must confine ourselves to a brief glance at the general structure of the human stomach, to which the cesophagus conducts. This is situated on the left side of the diaphragm or midriff: in its figure it resembles the pouch of a bagpipe; its left end is most capacious ; its upper side is concave, and its lower convex; the two orifices for receiving and discharging the food are situated in the upper * See Carus’s Comp. Anat., vol. i. p. 14. ; + Blumenbach’s Comp. Anat., pp. 82—87. 2d edit. When a horse is compelled to vomit, he makes such efforts with the abdominal muscles, that the pressure on the distended stomach sometimes bursts it, the rupture always taking place to- wards its great curvature. See Andral, Anat. Pathol., t. ii, p- 107.—Eniror. ’ } : . ’