Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen.
- John Hunter
- Date:
- 1840
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![“the result of his having established by a great number of re-- searches, that monsters are, like the beings called normal, subjecti to constant rules.” ; With respect to the cause or origin of monsters, Hunter referred] it to a condition of the original germ, or, as he expresses it, “ eachi part of each species seems to have its monstrous form originallyy impressed upon it.” In the introductory observations to his exten- sive collection of malformed fcetuses and parts, he assigns the: grounds for this hypothesis, and at the same time enunciates one of! the most remarkable laws of aberrant formations. “I shouldi imagine,” he writes, “that monsters were formed monsters from their very first formation, for this reason, that all supernumeraryy parts are joined to their similar parts, as a head to a head, &c., &c.’”” In proof of the important general principles, at a knowledge oft which Hunter had arrived, | have elsewhere quoted this passagey. together with the following remarkable one from Hunter’s descrip-- tions of his drawings illustrative of the development of the chick.. “If we were capable of following the progress of increase of the: number of the parts of the most perfect animal, as they first formed in succession from the very first, to its state of full perfection, we should probably be able to compare it with some one of the incom-. plete animals themselves, of every order of animals in the creation,, being at no stage diflerent from some of those inferior orders; om in other words, if we were to takea series of animals from the more imperfect to the perfect, we should probably find an imperfectt animal corresponding with some stage of the most perfect.”* We may, I think, perceive, from the evident difficulty with which: Hunter expresses the idea, that his mind was oppressed with both its novelty and vastness. Men’s thoughts require to be familiar-. ized with propositions of such generality before their exact limits: and full application can be appreciated. Sufficient, however, has been adduced to prove the tendency of! Hunter’s labours, and that he possessed the highest qualifications: as an investigator of Nature; unwearied in induction, sagacious in grouping together analogous phenomena, and ever striving to ascend from propositions of less to those of greater generality. | Had the means and time been granted to Hunter to have made public the results of all his labours, or had his manuscripts enuncia-. ting, or indicative of, so many general principles been fairly appre-: ciated and given to the world, our teachers of anatomy would not now, after a lapse of half a century, have but begun to explain ta their students those beautiful laws of animal development, for the knowledge of which they are indebted to the labours of the profes sors in the noble schools of physiology in Continental Europe, where the spirit of Hunterian inquiries seems to have so long exclusively; resided. But the period which has elapsed before those general laws began to be appreciated in the country where they were first detected, affords, perhaps, one of the strongest indications of the great advance which Hunter had made in physiological science. * See preface to the Physiological Catalogue, vol. i. p., ii.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33292292_0034.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
