The abdominal and pelvic brain with automatic visceral ganglia / Byron Robinson.

  • Robinson, Byron.
Date:
[1907], ©1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The abdominal and pelvic brain with automatic visceral ganglia / Byron Robinson. 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.

    26/682 (page 22)
    knowledge of anatomy and physiology was denied mankind by prohibiting human dissection. So far as I have been able to note almost all observations on the nerves of the genitals (uterus), previous to the fifteenth century, were almost valueless. Among the first names I find in literature referring to the nerves of the uterus is that of A. Vesalius, a Belgian by birth, professor of anatomy at the famous school of Padua, Italy. He was born in 1514 and died in 1564. Vesalius made the general statement (partly false and partly true) that the cervix was supplied by the sacral nerves (spinal) while the fundus was supplied by the sympathetic. This view of Vesalius generally prevailed for two centuries and was practically confirmed by the following famed eponymic names on anatomy: Eustachius (died 1574), Reignier de Graaf (1641-1673), Thomas Willis (16-22-1675), Albert Haller (1708-1777), Johann G. Walter (1734-1818). With investigation (anatomic and physiologic), and lapse of time, views changed. especially among the French, English and Germans. Definite records of dissection and observation on the nerves of the tractus genitalis (uterus) begin to accumulate in literature. Eustachius, an Italian anatomist of Eustachian tube fame, published at Amsterdam in 1722 Tabula Anatomica. Eustachius described the nerves connecting the lumbar ganglia with the hypogastric plexus, which in union with branches from the sacral nerves arrived at the side of the uterus. Reignier de Graaf, a Dutch anatomist of Graffian follicle fame, published at Amsterdam in 1705 Opera Omnia. He dissected and pursued the nerves to the uterus, ovary, oviduct and ligamentum latum. The presentations are schematic and description crude. Thomas Willis, an English anatomist and philosopher of Circle of Willis fame, published at Geneva in 1680 Cerebri Nervorumque Descriptio. Willis first described the course of the ovarian nerves, though defectively. He styled the solar plexus, cerebrum abdominale. Albert Haller, a Swiss anatomist of multiple eponymic fame, published at Lausanne in 1778 Elementa Physiologiae. He limited the origin of the ovarian nerves to the plexus renales and lateral sympathetic chain only. This error was repeated by Tiedemann in his 1822 publication. He left no illustration. R. Vieussens (1641-1716), a French anatomist of multiple eponymic fame (the ganglion of Vieussens—solar plexus), left a rough presentation of the sympathetic. Johann Gottlieb Walter, a German anatomist of coccygeal ganglion fame, published at Berlin in 1783 talnilcc ncrv. Thoracis ct Abdominis. He presents several excellent copper-plate tables of the thoracic and abdominal nerves, which have become famous for accurateness and careful preparation. To 1875 Walter's tables were the best presentation of the sympathetic, especially the best and most accurate in their presentation of the sympathetic nerves supplying the female tractus genitalis. Walter's tables are not schematic but naturally correct, excelling the later much-lauded tables of