Introductory address delivered at the opening of the second session of the Metropolitan School of Dental Science.

  • James Robinson
Date:
[1860]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory address delivered at the opening of the second session of the Metropolitan School of Dental Science. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    organs act, but also the way in which these acts arc accomplished, and to take coiignisance of the changes which they induce in the organs themselves. To solve these questions, it is necessary to enter upon axi entirely new series of investigations. We must ascertain what is the composition of these muscles, nerves, and bones; what are the elementary bodies which enter into their formation, anil what ai'e tlie proportions in which they are combinei.1 The physiologist must call to his ush;ist- ance the science of Chemistry. Physiology has ever advanced in pro- portion to the progress which has been made in Chemistry. Experience teaches us the necessity of respiration, and of a due supply of air ; ljut it took nearly four thousand years for mankind to learn what was the actual nature of this important function. Up to the middle of the sixteenth century, the passage of the air into the lungs was supposed to be for the purjiose of cooling the blood. It was only after the successive labours of Van Helmont, of Robert Boyle, of Mayow, of Priestley, and many others, upon the nature of the atmosphere and of the different gases, and when their researches had been crowned by the discovery of oxygen and the composition of the atmos])here by tlie great French chemist Lavoisier, that the true nature of respiration was ascertained. There can scarcely be a more striking instance of the intimate alliance which exists between Anatomy, Physiology, and Chemistrj'-, than the successive steps by which this knowledge was actiuired. The heart, the veins, and the ai-teries were known to exist in the body in the most ancient times of ancient Greece; but, finding the arteries always emjity al'ter death, the anatomists of those days supposed that during life they were filled with air—a doctrine which is still recorded in the name which these vessels have received. It was not until six hundred years afterwards, when Galen proved by direct exjieriment that, like the veins, the arteries also contain blood, that their true purjjose was explained. The blood was, however, still supposed to pass direct from one side of the heart to the other; and it was only after the lapse of tliirteen centuries, and when the dissections of Vesalius had shown that this could not take place, that Columbus of Padua and Cesalpiims of Pisa showed that the blood which was conveyed to the right side of the heart passed into the lungs, and from thence it returned to the left side of the heart, the air from the lungs being supposed to accompany it. Cesalpinus also ascertained that when a ligature was placed on a vein, it became distended on the side of the ligature which was farthest from the heart. About the same time, Fabricius, of Aquapendenta, carefully examined and described the valves of the veins; but he only regarded them as serving to
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