An inquiry into the use of the omentum / by James Rush of Philadelphia.
- James Rush
- Date:
- 1809
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An inquiry into the use of the omentum / by James Rush of Philadelphia. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![] o of common life. Secondly, it is not necessary. We know that moisture alone, is sufficient to give facility of motion to parts pliant and polished; now the in- testines are under these circumstances, with regard to themselves, and the peritoneum. Thirdly, by its fat it cannot lubricate the intestines. The omentum is not a fat-secreting surface, but a fat-containing cavi- ty : its surface affording nothing except that moisture which is natural to all internal membranes, and this I have spoken of as abundantly supplied without the aid of the omentum. Fourthly, the supposition that it is to prevent friction, only substitutes, for attrition, a substance less regular and yielding than the peritone- um it is intended to cover. II. A second use which has been ascribed to the omentum is, that it is intended, with other abdominal viscera, to prepare blood for the formation of bile. Here, from an accidental, and at the same time an' un- avoidable circumstance, is deduced a conclusion not warranted by any proof: accidental, as the liver was placed in the cavity of the abdomen, and unavoidable, as it could receive its blood from the viscera of no other part. If we infer from this situation of the liver, that a change takes place in the blood of the vena por- tarum, this change must be produced by each particu- lar viscus, or it must be the joint operation of all. It cannot be the former, for each of the several parts se- creting a different substance from the blood, must give a different quality of blood to be returned. If it be the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2115207x_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
