Volume 2

Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy / By John Hunter.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1786
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy / By John Hunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Be nity of learning exactly the ftate of the teftis before and after birth, and the ftate of ruptures in children. We were both convinced that the exa- mination of thofe facts would anfwer our expectation, and both recollected having feen appearances in children, that agreed with our fuppofition, but. faw now that we had neglected making the proper ufe of them. ‘< In the courfe of the winter, my brother had feveral opportunities of diffefing foetufes of different ages, and of making fome drawings of the parts; and all his obfervations agreed with the ideas I had formed of the nature of ruptures, and of the origin of the tunica vaginalis propria in the fetus. But till thofe obfervations were repeated to his {atisfaction, and were fufficiently afcertained, he defired me not to mention the opinion in my lecture; and therefore, when treating of the coats of the teftis, and of ~ the fituation of the hernial fac, &c. I only put in this temporary caution, that I was then {peaking of thofe things as they are commonly in adult bodies, and not as they are in the fetus: and at laft, when I was conclu- ding my leCtures for that feafon in the end of April, 1756, with a courfe of the chirurgical operations, I gave a very general account of my brother’s obfervations, and fhewed both the drawing of Fig. I. which was then finifhed, and the fubjeét from which it was made.” The following obfervations on this fubject are taken from my notes, publifhed by Dr. Hunter, in his commentaries, to which I have fince added. fome practical remarks. Until the approach of birth, the teftes of the foetus are lodged within the cavity of the abdomen, and may therefore be reckoned among the ab- dominal vifcera. They are fituated immediately below the kidneys, on the fous of the pfoe mufcles, and by the fide of the rectum, where this inteftine is paffing down into the cavity of the pelvis: for in the feetus the rectum, which is much larger in proportion to the capacity of the pelvis, than in the full- grown fubject, lies before the vertebre lumborum as well as before the os facrum. Indeed the cafe is pretty much the fame with regard to all the ‘contents of the pelvis ; that is, their fituation is much higher in the fcetus than in the adult; the figmoeide flexure of the colon, part of the re@um, the greateft part of the bladder, the fundus uteri, the fallopian tubes, ; ieee
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