The discovery of the nature of the spleen : from an investigation of the lateral homologies of the liver, stomach, and intestinal canal / by Henry R. Silvester.

  • Silvester, Henry R. (Henry Robert), 1829-1908.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The discovery of the nature of the spleen : from an investigation of the lateral homologies of the liver, stomach, and intestinal canal / by Henry R. Silvester. 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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    anderes Verhaltniss als die ubrigen Eingeweide des Un- terleibs. Man denke sicli doch keinen zweck wo keiner ist. Grundriss der Naturlehre des MenschlicJien Organis- mus. Von Ignaz Doellinger, M.D., 1805. Miiller, in his Ulements of Physiology, classifies the spleen with the suprarenal capsules, the thyroid and thy- mus gland, as was originally suggested by Ruysch, who also arranged the liver luider the same category. He says:— These are glands unprovided with an efficient duct; they agree in having the common function of im- pressing some change on the blood which circulates through them, or in yielding a lymph which plays a special part in the process of chylification and sanguification ] for the venous blood and the lymph are the only matters re- turned by them into the general system. The spleen is met with only in the vertebrate classes, and in them it is nearly constant. In the cetacea the organ is divided into several smaller masses. In man and mammalia the spleen lies in the fold of peritonasum, which is continuous with the serous covering of the ante- rior and posterior surface of the stomach, and extends be- tween the great curvature of the stomach, the diaphragm, and the transverse colon, and which at the part where it connects the stomach to the transverse colon is called the great omentum. This portion of peritonajum passes origi- nally from the spinal column in the middle line to the great curvature of the stomach, forming a mesogastrium in which the spleen was developed. The spleen, therefore, is not an organ proper to the left side of the body, of which the fellow of the opposite side is wanting. It should be regarded as an organ originally situated in the middle line, just like the liver, which at first, when its two lobes were equal, did not belong to the right side more than to the left. And again : All the theories which regard the spleen as essentially connected in its function with the liver can be shown to be fallacious. Doellinger supposes the spleen to be formed merely for the sake of symmetry to b6 the fellow of the liver,—the rudimentary liver, as it were, of the left side. But the liver is originally symmetrical; and the spleen is, as we have already described, developed in the middle line—no greater value can be accorded to
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