Introductory lecture to a course of lectures on the institutions of medicine / by John Fletcher.

Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory lecture to a course of lectures on the institutions of medicine / by John Fletcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the apparatus immediately subservient to it, and this, not in the human body alone, but in that of the lower animals also ; since it is obviously impossi- ble that we can reason fully or justly on the func- tions of any organ in the human body, without some knowledge of the structure of the corresponding or- gan in the inferior animals, and the means by which the same function is performed in them. It is only by proceeding in this way, from things simple to things complicated, that we can be made to under- stand what parts are essential to each function in man, and what are merely supernumerary ; and can be spared many false conclusions in the detail, into which a more circumscribed view of the matter would necessarily lead us. At the same time I am perfectly aware how useless it is to be continually harping upon the mere names of such animals, and describing their organs and functions, while per- haps the majority of our hearers are hardly con- scious of their existence, and know absolutely no- thing of their nature. In order to remedy this evil as far as possible, I shall, in most instances, present a rough diagram, as well as give a short description, of those parts in the lower animals to which I shall have occasion more particularly to allude ; and, under the same conviction of the greater impression always made when the images of the things talked about are presented to the senses, I shall endeavour to illus- trate, in the same way, every subject of Human Phy- siology, as 1 successively come to it. The diagrams at present hanging up relate to the function of Re- spiration, (the first to which we shall come after dis- ci
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