Volume 1
Lectures on surgical pathology : delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England / by James Paget.
- James Paget
- Date:
- 1853
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on surgical pathology : delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England / by James Paget. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)
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![embryonic digestive system, tiie stomach, intestines, liver, pancreas, and other organs are prodnced, these are deve- loped ; there is increase, but, at the same time, something more than mere increase. The distinction between development and increase, or growth, is well shown in this,—that, sometimes, even in instances in which they usually concur, the one proceeds without the other. I might quote many examples of this. 1 will choose two or three, which, at the same time, may illustrate some other striking facts. Among the mal- formations in the Museum of St. Bartholomew's Hospital (Series A, ]21 and 123), are the brains of two adult idiots. They are equally diminutive, and of nearly equal size: but in one, so far as we can see, there is a due proportion of the several -parts; it is only too small: in the other, the parts are not well proportioned; the posterior parts of the cerebrum do not half cover the cerebellum; indeed, no posterior cerebral lobes appear to be formed. Herein we recognise something more than a checked growth; for this truncation of the cerebrum indicates an arrest of its develop- ment at the time when its hinder lobes—the parts last pro- duced, and peculiarly characteristic of the human brain— were only just beginning to be formed. Our explanation of this most interesting specimen must be, that, when the brain had attained that degree of development which, ac- cording to Professor Retzius,* is proper to the human foetus about the beginning of the fifth month, and corresponds with the completed development of the brain of lower mammalia, then its development ceased. But though in form it is like the fcetal brain in the fifth month, yet, iu all its dimensions, it is larger; so that, although its develop- ment had ceased, its growth continued, and was not checked * Arch. d'Anat. et de Physiol., Jan. 1846.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2128913x_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
