Galen : two bibliographical demonstrations in the library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 9th December, 1891, and 30th March, 1893 / by James Finlayson.

  • James Finlayson
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Galen : two bibliographical demonstrations in the library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 9th December, 1891, and 30th March, 1893 / by James Finlayson. 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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    distended with urine (Kiihn, torn, ii, p. 36); and if, wlien the bladder has been distended with urine, you fix a sufficiently tight ligature on the penis, and compress the bladder even with consider- able force, you will find that no urine repasses into the ureters, and for this he accounts by the oblique entrance of the ureters into the bladder, the obliquity of the entrance forming a natural valve, the action of which valve, he adds, is so perfect as to prevent the regurgitation not only of liquids, but even of air, as is proved in the common inflation of the bladder of any animal.—(Kiihn, torn, iii, p. 390). [^Recurrent Laryngeal JVerve].— Galen's sixth pair will easily be recognised as answering to the eighth pair of modern anatomy; for he says of them that although they arise from different points within the cranium, they yet become united in their exit from that cavity; that they give branches on each side to the muscles of the larynx, on which branches, if a ligature be made, or on the trunk near the carotid artery, the animal becomes dumb (Kiihn, tom. ii, p. 841) ; that some of the branches after having entered the thorax pass up in a retrograde direction to the muscles of the larynx, and that if these branches be injured the voice of the animal is impaired though not destroyed. Galen asserts that he first discovered these branches, and, from the peculiarity of their course, gave them the name 'recurrent' (Kiihn, tom. ii, pp. 841-844). The habitual accuracy of his observation is evinced when he corrects the error of those experimentalists, who, omitting to separate the contiguous nerves, in making a ligature on the carotids, supposed that the consequent loss of voice depends on the compression of those arteries, and not on the compression of the accompanying nerves (Kiihn, tom. v, pp. 266-7). Galen on the Pulse. Galen's strongest point in diagnosis turned on his discrimi- nation of the different kinds of pulse. On account of his wonderful skill in this way, it was said that Apollo prophesied by the mouth of Galen. Full justice is done to him by M. Ozanam and by Sir William Broadbent in ■-^2 Ozanam, La Circulation et le Pouls (Paris, 1886), p. 2L