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.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![of reading Baron Haller's observations On the Hernia Congenita,* it struck my imagination! that the state of the testis in the foetus, and its descent from the abdomen into the scrotum, would explain several things concerning ruptures and the hydrocele, particularly that observation which Mr. Sharp had communicated to me, viz., that in ruptures the intestine is sometimes in contact, with the testis. I communicated my ideas upon this subject to my brother, and desired that he would take every opportunity of learning exactly the state of the testis before and after birth, and the state of ruptures in children. We were both convinced that the examination of those facts would answer our expectation, and both recollected having seen appearances in children that agreed with our supposition, but saw now that we had neglected making the proper use of them. In the course of the winter my brother had several opportunities of dissecting foetuses of different ages, and of making some draw- ings of the parts ; and all his observations agreed with the ideas I had formed of the nature of ruptures, and of the origin of the tunica vaginalis propria in the foetus. But till those observations were repeated to his satisfaction, and were sufficiently ascertained, he desired me not to mention the opinion in my lecture ; and therefore, when treating of the coats of the testis, and of the situation of the hernial sac, &c, I only put in this temporary caution, that I was then speaking of those things as they are commonly in adult bodies, and not as they are in the foetus: and at last, when I was conclud- ing my lectures for that season, in the end of April 1756, with a course of the chirurgical operations, I gave a very general account of my brother's observations, and showed both the drawing of fig. 2, which was then finished, and the subject from which it was made. The following observations on this subject were taken from my notes, and published by Dr. Hunter in his commentaries to which I have added some practical remarks. Until the approach of birth, the testes of the foetus are lodged within the cavity of the abdomen, and may therefore be reckoned among the abdominal viscera. They are situated immediately below the kidneys, on the fore part of the psoas muscles, and by the side of the rectum, where this intestine is passing down into the * Alberti Hallen Opuscul. Pathohg., Lausan. 1755, 8vo., page 53, &c. f [Although Haller was in doubt as to the exact period of The descent of the testis, and in error as to the cause of that phenomenon, yet he accurately describes in the original paper here alluded to, the original relations of the gland to the peritoneum and abdominal viscera, and the formation of the tunica vaginalis, and thus applies the facts which he had discovered to the explanation of The disease he was considering. « Herniarum, ni fall or, congenitarum modus hinc elucescit, quo generantur. Patulus est processus peritonei sub renibus positus, qui ex- pectat testem invitatque aperto ostio, atque eo deorsum ex solita lege pulso urgelur, inque scrotum una descendit. Cum autem his in corporibus testes eodem cum intestinis sacco omnino contineantur, nihil est singularis sive inexpectati, si ea in apertum saccum a levi vi depressa fuerint. (0/nt.sc. Patkolog., p. 5(3.) In this paper there are references to the older authors who had noticed the abdominal position of the testes in the fcetus.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21131545_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
