Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memoir of the late Martin Barry, M.D., F.R.SS.L. and E. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![Pliil. Trans, for 1839), it may be tliat liis interpretation of the nature of this remarkable phenomenon is somewhat different from that which most physiolo- gists, with the extended and improved observation since made of the corre- sponding 2)henomena in the ova of a great many other animals, may now be disposed to adopt; but we ought not, on this account, to deny to Dr Jkrry the merit whicli is unquestionably due to him, of having first extended to mam- malia, the observation of a jihenomenon which had previously been known only in the Batrachia, and of thus giving a remarkable impulse to the obser- vation of the earliest changes of the yolk succeeding to fecundation. With respect to the second discovery to which I have referred, it is well known that much doubt for a long time prevailed. In the third memoir, read to the Royal Society in May 1840, Dr Barry stated, that he had observed a small body like a spermatozoon pas.sing into the ovum of the rabbit, through an aperture or cleft in the zona pellucida. But as this was in itself a novel observation, and had been made on an ovum taken from the Graafian follicle of the ovary, it did not obtain much credence. In October 1843, Dr Barry pub- lished a notice of an observation, which he had then made, of spermatozoa within the ovum of the rabhit taken from the Fallopian tube, and in process of segmentation. In this instance, although there was no aperture to be perceived in the zona, as in the former instance. Dr Barry conceived his first statement to be fully confirmed. It is familiar to most of the readers of physiological works, that even this last observation, though much more articulate than the first, was met with a very positive denial by Bischoff and othei-s, who failed to confirm the fact of the penetration of the spermatozoa into the ovum; and that it was not till nine years afterwards, that the observations of Dr Nelson on the Impregnation of the Ascaris mystax gave a new impulse to the study of this subject, and that Mr Newport was led to the discovery of the penetration of the spermatozoa into the ovum of the frog ; and that still more recently the careful re-examination of the subject in mammalia, has resulted in the com- plete confirmation by Bischoff himself, Meissner, and others, of the fact of the entrance of spermatozoa into the mammiferous ovum, as stated by Dr BaiTy in 1840, and, more j)articularly described and figured by him in 1843. Knowing the ardent desire which Dr Barry always cherished to rank among original physiological discoverers, we can readily conceive and sympathise W'ith the lively satisfaction he must have felt at finding not only his single observation confirmed, but the fact which it attested in one important class of animals extended to a number of others, and thus made, in some measure, the foundation of a great general law. Nor can we be surprised that, to a mind so sensitive as Dr Barry’s, the doubt, and almost obloquy, thrown over his observations by the disbelief in his statement as to this and some other points, should have been converted into exultation, in witnessing the discomfiture of those who, somewhat inconsiderately and intemperately, undervalued his researches. The most valuable ]iart of Dr Barry’s embryological researches, besides the facts already adverted to, were those relating to the first formation of the ovum, and its earliest changes. lie was not so fortunate by any means in his observations on the first formation of the embryo ; but, indeed, he can scai'cely be said to have entered fully into the investigation of this part of the subject. In so extensive a field of research, it might be expected that his views should have sometimes undergone a change in the progress of his investigations, and that he might also fall into errors to be corrected by subsequent observer's. Dr Barry's embryological researches very soon led him also into histolo- gical observations. Together with all those who followed the progress of anatomico-physiological discovery between the years 1835 and 1840, he was strongly impressed with the novelty and importance of the facts and views brought forward by Schleiden and Schwann on cytogenesis, and the relation of the process of cell formation and change to the origin and growth of the various textures of living bodies ; and he already showed how fully he was](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24931652_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
