An inaugural dissertation on the congenital malformations of the heart / by John Paget.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural dissertation on the congenital malformations of the heart / by John Paget. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    UliVKLOl'JiMKNX AND CLASSIKICATIOK established. * That an artery will generally be absent, when the part to the nourishment of which it should be appropriated is wanting, is sufficiently probable; but it may well admit of doubt, whether the former deficiency be the cause or merely the effect of the latter, especially as we find the rudiments of many parts before there is any trace of a vascular system. Tiedemann, f proceeding on the hypothesis that the nervous system precedes and regulates the developement of the rest of the body, imagined that he had discovered the cause of mon- strosity, in the defective or excessive developement of this sys- tem. I This theory, however, is scarcely more tenable than that of M. Serres ; for thougli the relation between the excessive and defective parts, and their nerves, as well as their arteries, gene- rally holds, yet it is far from universal; and we have according- ly, sometimes entire absence of the brain arid spinal marrow, with a body otherwise nearly perfect; § at others, a cranium complete in all its parts, while the brain is absent, || as well as innumerable other examples of malformation quite inexplicable on these principles.^ The remark of Cuvier, ** in an analysis of the work of M. Serres, is equally applicable to either opi- • A case scarcely reconcilable with this opinion is detailed in Tiedemann's Zeit- schrift fur Physiologie, Band. iii. p. 6. f Arch. Gen. de Med. Tom. xii. p. 614. J Zeitschrift fur Physiologie, 3e eahier, 1828. § Arch. Gen. de Med. Tom. xx. p. 454, and MS. Catalogue of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, M.wi. 8. II Philos. Anat. des Monst. Humaines (Anencephalie) p. 88. f Though unwilling to dwell at greater length on this part of the subject than is absolutely necessary, we cannot resist quoting a case related by Professor Mayer (Graefe und Walther's Journ- Tom. x. cah. 2.) of a heteradelphe monster, as it so completely contradicts the hypotheses both of Serres and Tiedemann. A foetus of natural size was furnished with a parasite attached to the sternum, and consisting only of a pelvis and well-formed lower extremities. The blood by which the para- site was nourished, was entirely derived from the internal mammary artert/ of die principal foetus, which afterwards dividing into two femorals, was distributed to the limbs. There was no appeai-ance ■whatsoever of a cerebrospinal nervous system ; the sciatic, crural, and obturator nerves were wanting, and no filaments could be observed distributed to the muscles. A renal and mesenteric plexus sending oft' a small twig accompanying the crural artery, were the only parts of the nervous sys- tem which could be discovered. Analyse des Travaux dc I'Acad. Royale des Sciences, annce 182,>, p. 'M.