Volume 2

An introductory lecture to the medical classes in King's College, London ... Read, October 1, 1834 / [Herbert Mayo].

  • Herbert Mayo
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introductory lecture to the medical classes in King's College, London ... Read, October 1, 1834 / [Herbert Mayo]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fluid matter appears, which, on its acquiring more con- sistency, becomes the rudiment of the spinal marrow. The same matter collects in the pyriform chamber at the top into three bladders, which are the rudiment of the brain. As the brain and spinal marrow, so are the bones, nerves, muscles, and tegumentary systems of the body, developed in the outer or serous layer. The inner or mucous layer, folding itself while it ex¬ pands, forms the rudiment of the alimentary canal. The middle or vascular layer originates the heart and blood vessels; and, conjointly with the mucous layer, the glandular system and the lungs. How wonderful is this process. The egg, containing its principle of development, may be kept without change for months, even for years, under proper precau¬ tions for excluding extremes of temperature, and for pre¬ venting evaporation. Expose it then to warmth, and the process of development begins. It is impossible to look for an instant into nature, without the attention being arrested by the evidence of contrivance and design, all- pervading, everywhere visible ; but in no case perhaps is that evidence so striking as the present. A transparent membrane, swelling with the warmth it is exposed to, absorbs albumen ; that albumen, so absorbed, is converted into a prodigious number of distinct substances,.— brain, nerve, muscle, sinew, cartilage, bone, blood-vessel, bowel, skin, beak, claws, feathers, — and that without the smallest mistake as to the quality and shaping of each ; not the smallest error as to their place ; a feather not placed where a bone should be, a blood-vessel where a sinew; all these parts, too, keeping a wonderful and exact proportion to each other; and disposed in such harmony, as that by the twenty-first day, at which the rapid construction of the animal body has been com-
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