Treatise on human physiology : For the use of students & practitioners of medicine / By Henry C. Chapman. Illustrated with 595 engravings.

  • Henry Cadwalader Chapman
Date:
1899
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on human physiology : For the use of students & practitioners of medicine / By Henry C. Chapman. Illustrated with 595 engravings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    ment, arc illustrations of the application of patliological cases to the study of physiology. When the vast complexity of structure exhibited by the human organization is considered, it becomes evident that any investigation of its function, however extended, if it be confined to man alone, can lead to but very limited results. Comparative anatomy has shown, however, that tlie life of the animal kingdom is a grand panorama, each fleeting form, as it passes before the view, recalling that which has just passed, fore- shadowing that which is to come; the simplest of living beings, so lowly organized and transparent that their entire life processes can be observed by the microscope, leading througli intermediate forms to higher types of life, closely approaching that of man himself. With the development of additional structures, we find correspond- inglv increased functions, and infer tliat the new function is due to the new structure. The comparative method of investigation is therefore the opjxjsite of the pathological one, by which, as we have seen, the use of a structure is inferred from loss of function dependent upon the loss of structure. In the hands of Harvey, Hunter, Cuvier, ]Muller, Milne Ed- wards, Owen, comparative anatomy has proved of invaluable service in the study of physiology. In his great work, Harvey^ states that if anatomists had given to the organization of the inferior animals the same attention that they devote to the structure of the human body, the question of the circulation would long since have been determined. Observations upon the enlargement of the collateral vessels in the horns of the deer when in the velvet after ligature of the carotid, suggested to the great ])hysiological surgeon, John Hunter, the idea of the collateral vessels maintaining the circulation in the thigh after ligature of the main trunk. The ligation of the carotid in the dog,'^ and of the femoral in the same animal, done ])y Home ^ at the suggestion of Hunter, having further convinced the latter of the feasibility of ligation as a cure for aneurism. Hunter tied the femoral artery in the celebrated case of the coachman suffering from popliteal aneurism and thereby in- troduced a most capital improvement in surgery.• To study the pliysiology of man without the slightest knowledge of life as exhibited in the lower animals is as if one would attempt to master the steam engine without any acquaintance with the ele- mentary laws of heat or mechanics, or to investigate a magnetic a])paratus without knoAving anytliing about the simple facts of elec- tricity. ' De Motu Cordis, p. 'A?,. Frankfort, 1628. ^ Works, edited by Palmer, vol. iii., p. 201. ^Ibid., vol. i., p. 444. *Ibid., vol. iii., p. 597. 5 Experimental I'liysiology, p. 30. Owen. London, 1882.