Volume 1

Catalogue of the anatomical and pathological preparations of Dr. William Hunter; prepared by J.H. Teacher.

  • Hunterian Museum (University of Glasgow)
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Catalogue of the anatomical and pathological preparations of Dr. William Hunter; prepared by J.H. Teacher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    65/488 (page 57)
    discovery; with respect to animals, this was the opinion of Need- ham,^ that it was made of two sorts of vessels, the one uterine, the other foetal, both blended together, but he does not assign any reason for it, or say that it was distinctly so in the human body. Harvey also clearly states that there was no mixing of the two bloods.- But the actual anatomical proof of these facts was wanting, and William Hunter supplied it. In his earlier days the prevailing opinion was that the red blood passes by continuity of canal from the uterus into the blood-vessels of the foetus, circulates through its body and returns again to the mother. Strange to say, the holders of this opinion also thought that the foetus was nourished by swallowing the liquor amnii. Hunter finally and conclusively proved the reverse, and established correct notions as to the nutrition of the foetus in utero. From all I can make out by injections and every other way I shall certainly conclude that the red blood does not pass from the mother to the child. I no more doubt this than I do that the blood does not pass from the hen to the chick,^ Concerning the nutrition of the foetus, he held that the child is entirely nourished by the navel string. As to how this was effected he had difficulties. For my part I think all this is done by absorp- tion, and the navel-string and its branches are like the roots of a [the] child which are bathed in the blood and the juices of the mother, which they absorb and take up and carry to the child; and no doubt what is redundant in the child is returned to the mother. As to what he meant by absorption in this connection, there is no clear passage that can be quoted; he thought there might be some kind of vessels with valves that when juices get in a little way ^ De Formato Foetu. Walter Needham, 12mo, London, 1667. De Oeneratione Animalium. London, 1651. 'In favour of the other view, Hunter was accustomed to tell his students there were many cases on record of mothers having bled to death by the navel string, and of foetuses found bloodless through a flooding that had destroyed the mother. Thus it is asserted, but they are deceived . . . there is no believing these things unless they come from a man of great accuracy and delicacy. He should be accurate in his observations and faithful in his narra- tives. These qualifications do not combine among philosophers and learned men once in one hundred times; most philosophers, most great men, most anatomists, and most other men of eminence lie like the devil. Plain speak- ing for a professor addressing his class! Midioifery Lectxires. MS. 42, c. 31, in the library of the R.C.S., Eng., pp. 96-97. * Midioifery Lectures. MS. R.C.S.,Eng., 42, c. 31, pp. 98 and 100. The simile of the hen and the chick may have been borrowed from Harvey. That of the placenta as the root of the child, John Hunter gave as his own in 1780.