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
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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![is not au organ in the animal body Avhose functions have not been learned, in part at least, by vivisections. Let us illustrate this statement by a few examples. Consider the history of the circulation of the blood, and we shall see that every important advance made in a knowledge of the subject was due to a vivisection. Thus, Galen demonstrated by vivisection that the artery contained blood and not air, as its et^^uology would indicate. It was by a vivisection that Harvey proved that the blood flowed from the heart to the periphery through the arteries, and from the periphery back to the heart through the veins. Finally, it was through a vivisection that Malpighi saw, for the first time, the blood actually flowing from the arteries into the veins through the intermediate vessels, the capillaries. One of the most important discoveries ever made in physiology, that of the functions of the roots of the spinal nerves, that the anterior are motor and the posterior are sensory, was demonstrated by Majendie upon a living animal. The influence of the nervous system upon the heart, so far as is known, has been en- tirely learned by the experimental investigations made upon ani- mals by the AVebers, Yon Bezold, Ludwig, Cyon, etc. The beau- tiful investigations of Bernard upon the salivary glands, the l)ancreas, the liver, by means of vivisections, have demonstrated certain peculiarities in reference to the secretion of these organs, that could never have been learned by any other method. By means of vivisection Brown-Sequard showed the influence of the sympathetic nerve in diminishing the calibre of the ])lood vessels, and thence discovered the vasomotor nerves, by which the distri- bution of the l:)lood to the tissues is regulated. It is needless to multiply examples of the imjjortance of vivisection as a means of research, as nearly every chapter in this work will afford such. It must not be forgotten, however, that vivisection is but one means of physiological research, and that however important may be the results obtained by it, the latter, as already mentioned, should be always compared with such facts of comparative anatomy and pathology as have a bearing upon the function investigated, so that so far as possil^le all sources of fallacy may 1)e eliminated. To those fjimiliar with the history of medicine any argument to prove the importance of the study of physiology would be super- fluous. Physiology has always been, and is still, the corner- stone of medicine. The doctrines of Hippocrates, Galen, Syden- ham, Bocrhaave, Hiniter, and Virchow, reflect as a mirror the physiology of the day. It is self-evident that to understand dis- ease and its cure one must first understand health. The study of physiology must precede that of pathology and therapeutics. Hand in hand they advance together, the progress of the one depending ujion that of the other. There is no better illustration of the truth of this view of the dependence of pathology and therapeutics upon physiology than ophthalmic medicine, the most developed and fin-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21226131_0032.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
