Contributions to the anatomy of the Indian elephant. Pt. I. The thoracic viscera / by Morrison Watson.

  • Watson, Morrison.
Date:
[1872]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the anatomy of the Indian elephant. Pt. I. The thoracic viscera / by Morrison Watson. 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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    similar observation as to the remarkable habit of the elephant, had been made by the author of the Ayeen AIcberry, in his ac- count of the Feel Kctneh, or elephant stables of the Emperor Akbar, in which he says: “An elephant frequently with his trunk takes water out of his stomach and sprinkles himself with it, and it is not in the least offensive.” The means by which this is effected Tennent believed to lie in the presence of a muscle described by the late Prof. Harrison of Dublin, which is referred to as follows in the work already quoted1. Dr Har- rison in the course of his examination of the thoracic viscera, observed that an unusually close connection existed between the trachea and oesophagus, which he found to depend on a muscle unnoticed by any previous anatomist, connecting the back of the former with the fore part of the latter, along which the fibres descend, and can be distinctly traced to the cardiac orifice of the stomach. Imperfectly acquainted with the habits and functions of the elephant in a state of nature, Dr Harrison found it difficult to pronounce as to the use of this very peculiar structure; but looking to the intimate connection between the mechanism concerned in the functions of respiration and deglu- tition, and seeing that the proboscis served in a double capacity as an instrument of voice and an organ for the prehension of food, he ventured to express the opinion that this muscle, viewing its attachment to the trachea, might either have some influence in raising the diaphragm, and thereby assisting in expiration, “or that it might raise the cardiac orifice of the stomach, and so aid this organ to regurgitate a portion of its contents into the oesophagus2.” Unfortunately, however, for this theory, no trace whatever of the trachea-oesophageal muscle was to be found in the specimen I examined; and, as no mention is made of it by any other anatomist, we must, I think, conclude that the muscle was only exceptionally present in Harrison’s elephant (which is also the case with a corresponding muscle in the human subject3), as it is hardly probable, supposing the function alluded to to depend exclusively on the existence of such an arrangement, that the muscle should be present in one specimen and absent in another. 1 11 ‘ **14. 2 Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. iv. 133. Vide Henlo, Anatomic des Menschen, Baud ii. p. 151.
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