Notes on a cetaceous animal stranded on the north-east coast of Ireland ; On the size of the red corpuscles of the blood of the great anteater (Myrmecophaga jubata) / by George Gulliver.

  • Gulliver, George, 1804-1882.
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on a cetaceous animal stranded on the north-east coast of Ireland ; On the size of the red corpuscles of the blood of the great anteater (Myrmecophaga jubata) / by George Gulliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Anatomy.—Through the kindness of Mr. Brabnzon, the excellent surgeon of Downpatrick, I had an opportunity of examining the foetus of which the measurements have just been given. As the dissection was suddenly stopped, the details are imperfect, though accurate as far as they go. The skin was of a dark leaden colour, and the blubber on the sides of the body about half an inch thick. There were soft fringes or processes of the gums, corresponding in situation and number to the coming teeth. The thymus of moderate size, at the usual situation in the chest, and sending no process to the neck. The spleen and a spleniculus together scarcely so big as a walnut. A flat rounded gland, about three-fourths of an inch in diameter, situated above the renal vessels on each side, and at a distance of upwards of an inch from the kid- ney, had more the appearance of a lymphatic gland than of the supra- renal body. On opening the chest, each lung was seen to be covered with lym- phatic vessels, running to a gland at the stemo-ventral aspect of the free edge of the lung. The gland was very juicy, had every appear- ance of a lymphatic gland, and measured one inch and a quarter long and five-eighths broad. This pulmonary gland in the adult is harder, more fibrous, and less juicy, and measures four and a half inches long by two broad. The stomach with two chief compartments; the first continuing backwards on a line with the gullet, and lined, like it, with a white thick smooth membrane and epithelium ; the second, or true digest- ing stomach, lined with a mucous membrane in folds, and somewhat smaller than the first, of a more rounded form, and extending from its middle to the duodenum. In the first was a quantity of thick, opake, whitish fluid, and in the second a little mucus. There was no gall-bladder. The bile-duct, close to the duodenum, was as thick as a goose quill. The last portion of the intestine was full of meconium, like that of the human foetus. There was no caecum ; the intestines were nearly uniform in size throughout, their surface smooth and not at all cellulated. Length of the whole intestinal canal, from stomach to vent, thirty feet. The kidneys large and lobulated throughout; the lobules from a quarter to half an inch in diameter, and having each a very delicate capsule of connecting tissue. The blood-vessels enter the kidney, not near its middle, but at its fore and inner or atlanto-mesial end. The mesenteric glands moderate in size and number, of uniform consistency, and without any cavity or hollow in them, unlike those of the whale described by Mr. Abemethy. The womb with twTo horns, and the ovaries in the usual situation; mammary slits on a level with and near to the orifice of the vagina. Urinary bladder empty, and the urethra opening just behind the clitoris. Descriptive Characters.—Teeth conical and slightly curved inwards, from eight to twelve on each side of the jaws, making from thirty-two to forty-eight teeth altogether ; but eleven on either side of each jaw is a common number, and there is sometimes one more in the upper a 2