Volume 1

Lectures on the comparative anatomy and physiology of the invertebrate animals, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1843 / By Richard Owen ... From notes taken by William White Cooper and revised by Professor Owen.

  • Richard Owen
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the comparative anatomy and physiology of the invertebrate animals, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1843 / By Richard Owen ... From notes taken by William White Cooper and revised by Professor Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    another organ in the same body, by considering them in relation to the general nature and powers of the entire animal, together with its relations to other animals, and to the sphere of its existence, that we are chiefly enabled to elucidate the uses of the several super- additions which are met with in following out the series of com- plexities of a single organ. Comparative Anatomy fulfils only a part of its services to Physiology, if studied exclusively in relation to the varieties of a given organ in different animals: the combinations of all the constituent organs in one animal must likewise be studied; and these combinations with the principles governing them, or the correlations of organs, must be traced and compared in all their varieties throughout the animal kingdom. It is in this point of view that I now propose to bring before you the leading facts of Comparative Anatomy, to discuss and demonstrate the organs as they are combined in the individual animal, and, com- mencing with the lowest organised species in which the combination is of the simplest kind, to trace it to its highest state of complexity and perfection, through the typical species of the successively ascend- ing primary groups and classes of the animal kingdom. In short, as my previous courses of Hunterian lectures, agreeably with the arrangement of the Hunterian Collection, have treated of Com- parative Anatomy according to the organs, in the ascending order, so, in the present course, Comparative Anatomy will be considered ac- cording to the class of animals, and also in the ascending scale. Many examples suggest themselves of the advantage of this mode of studying the organisation of animals for the purpose of acquiring just conceptions of the uses of the organs. In tracing, for example, the progressive complication of the heart, we first find the simple dorsal vessel; it is next concentrated into a ventricle, and to this single cavity an auricle is afterwards appended: then the auricle becomes divided; afterwards there are two ventricles: there are instances even in the animal kingdom where there are three ventricles and ten ventricles. Now, the two-cavitied, diccelous, or bipartite heart is met with in the snail and in the fish; but the physiology of such conformation of the organ can only be explained by its connec- tions with other organs, and by the general structure and habits of the animal. First, then, as to the connections of the bipartite heart. In the snail it is so placed, in reference to the breathing organ, that it receives the aerated blood from that organ and propels it to the system: it is an organ for the. circulation of arterial blood; in other words, a systemic heart. ‘The bipartite structure of the central organ
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