Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1844-5 / [Sir James Paget].

  • James Paget
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the progress of human anatomy and physiology in the year 1844-5 / [Sir James Paget]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    being' amputated at the shoulder) a blow with the hand will excite powerful contractions in the hared muscles; and twenty minutes or more after death a large hatchet weighing three pounds being tied in a subject’s hand, it is said that the fore-arm was bent several times so as to raise the hatchet and strike the trunk as often as the flexor muscles were struck with the hand. DIGESTION. Structure of the digestive organs; The Tongue. Dr. Nuhn* * * § has mi¬ nutely described a pair of glands in the substance of the lower part of the apex of the tongue. Each gland lies about two lines from the median line, just below the ranine artery, on the outer side of the expanding branches of the lingual division of the trifacial nerve, under some longitudinal fibres of the anterior part of the stylo-glossus. It has the structure of a salivary gland, and measures from 7 to 10 lines in length, from 3 to in breadth, and from 1£ to 2^ in thickness. It has, at least, five ducts, which open through the mucous membrane over it by small orifices, each surrounded by a slightly elevated ring ; it receives many branches from, and sometimes surrounds, the ranine artery. Dr. Nuhn has at present found the gland in man and the orang alone ; he has sought it in vain in many other mammalia; he thinks therefore it may be a mucous gland whose fluid facilitates the movement of the tongue in speak¬ ing: [it looks exactly like a salivary gland]. Structure of the Palate,\ Dr. TourtualJ has detected a new muscle of the posterior nares and palate, and found it regularly in six men as well as in dogs, cats, and sheep. It lies between the mucous membrane and the internal pterygoid plate, before the Eustachian tube, and behind the inferior meatus of the nose. Its upper edge or origin extends from below the palatine process of the turbinated bone backwards and upwards, towards the upper margin of the Eustachian tube ; in this line the muscle arises from the vertical plate of the palate bone, and from the internal pterygoid plate of the sphenoid, reaching sometimes to the cartilage of the Eustachian tube; hence its fibres straight descend, and are augmented by others arising from the several parts near which they pass; and going just behind the hard palate, they enter the anterior and outer part of the soft palate, in which they expand on an aponeu¬ rosis, mingling with that of the circumflexus palati. The posterior margin of the muscle is usually confused with the anterior fibres of the levator palati, and is covered by a short fold of mucous membrane, which forms the anterior margin of the orifice of the Eustachian tube. The discoverer proposes for this muscle the name of pterygo-palatine, or levator palati mollis anterior seu minor.§ It receives a (probably sensitive) filament from the internal palatine branch of the fifth; and has, probably, also motor fibres from the glosso-pharyngeal. The function of the pair of muscles is probably that of elevating and of slightly stretching transversely the anterior and lateral parts of the soft palate, for which the larger and pos¬ terior levatores palati do not provide. In this tension of the palate they probably prevent the anterior fibres of the circumflexi from drawing the an¬ terior part of the palate backwards. They probably are important in sounding the palatine consonants, and their posterior portions may assist the greater levatores palati in narrowing the Eustachian orifices. Structure of the Liver. An elaborate anatomy of the liver, with measure- * Ueber eine bis jetzt noch nieht n'aher beschr. Driise im innern der Zungenspitze; Mannheim, 1845, 4to. I supposed he had discovered these glands, but Schlemm (Muller’s Archiv, H. v, 1045) shows that they were discovered by Blandin, and decribed in his Anatomie Topographique, p. 175; Paris, 1834. f On the Structure of the Teeth ; see, in a future part, Prof. Owen’3 account of their development. t Muller’s Archiv, 1844, Heft v, p. 452. § This name had better be used ; for the former has been already applied to what is probably a part of this muscle, arising fiom the hamular process of the pterygoid plate, and mingled with fibres of the pterygo-pbaryngeus. See Haller, Elem. Physiol, t. vi, p. 80, note t.