The hand, its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design. / by Sir Charles Bell.

  • Bell, Charles, Sir, 1774-1842.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hand, its mechanism and vital endowments, as evincing design. / by Sir Charles Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    quently than other creatures, and they remain long under the water. I conceive that the pec&liarity in their mode of respir- ation corresponds with this property. Hence their vesicular lungs; their mode of swallowing the air, instead of inhaling it; and hence, especiallj'', their power of compressing the body and expelling the air. It is this provision for emptying the lungs, I imagine, which enables reptiles to go under the water and crawl upon the bottom. Had they possessed the lungs of warm-blooded animals, which are compressible only in a slight degree, their capacity of remaining under water would have been of no use; when they dived, they would have had to struggle against their own buoyancy, like a man, or any of the mammalia, when submerged. The girdle of bones of the shoul- der is constituted, therefore, with a certain relation to the pecu- liar action of respiration; inasmuch as the pliancy of the thorax is provided in order that the vesicular lungs may be easily com- pressed, and the specific weight diminished. The facility which the absence of ribs in the batrachian order affords, for compress- ing the lungs extended through the abdomen, and the extreme weakness and pliancy of the ribs in the saurians, must be, as I apprehend, peculiarities adapted to the same end. OF THE HUMERUS, OE AEM-BONB. The demonstration of this bone need not be so dry a matter of detail as the anatomist makes it. From its form may be deduced that curious relation of parts which has been so suc- cessfully employed by Paley to prove design, and from which the genius of Baron Cuvier has brought out some of the finest examples of inductive reasoning. In looking to the head of this bone in the human skeleton, (see the fig. in p. 32,) we observe its great hemispherical surface for articulating with the glenoid cavity or socket of the scapula; and we see that the two tubercles for the insertion of muscles near the joint are depressed, and do not interfere with the re- volving of the humerus by striking against the edges of the socket. Such appearances alone are sufficient to show that aU the motions of the arm are free. To give assurance of this, and to illustrate how the form of the shoulder points to the structure of the whole arm, suppose that the geologist has picked up this bone in interesting circum-