Discovery that the veins of the bat's wing (which are furnished with valves) are endowed with rythmical [sic] contractility, and that the onward flow of blood is accelerated by each contraction / by T. Wharton Jones.

  • Jones, Thomas Wharton, 1808-1891.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discovery that the veins of the bat's wing (which are furnished with valves) are endowed with rythmical [sic] contractility, and that the onward flow of blood is accelerated by each contraction / by T. Wharton Jones. 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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    one-eighth of an inch object-glass, and the two lowest eyepieces, affording magnifying powers of 370 and 550 diameters. The web of the wing was stretched out on the object plate, wetted on both sides with water, and covered with a thin plate of glass at the spot to be examined. Appendix to the Foregoing Paper. Received December 11, 1851,—Read February 5, 1852. In consequence of the dark pigment in the cells of the epidermis of the web of the Bat’s wing, the structure of the vessels cannot be well made out except by dissection. A small piece of the web containing vessels being detached and disposed in a drop of water, under the simple microscope, the two layers of skin may be readily torn from each other with needles, and the artery and vein with their accompanying nerve, which lies between the two, separated in one bundle. In pieces cut out of a web which had been dried, the bundle of vessels and nerve was, after tearing away the skin, left surrounded by a sheath of cellular and elastic fibres disposed longitudinally ; but in pieces cutout from the living web and directly examined, this sheath was always detached along with the skin, and the vessels with their accompanying nerve at once laid bare (see Plate IV. fig. 5.). Both artery and vein are seen to have a middle coat of circularly disposed muscular fibres ; but the appearance of the fibres is different in the two vessels. The fibres of the vein are about gg^dths of an inch broad, pale, grayish, semitrans- parent and granular-looking. In general aspect they very much resemble the mus- cular fibres of the lymphatic hearts of the frog. In none of the muscular fibres of the vein, however, did I detect an unequivocal appearance of transverse marking. The fibres of the middle coat of the artery are not so pale-looking as those of the middle coat of the vein, are clearer, and exhibit a more strongly marked contour. Second Appendix. Received May 10,—Read May 13, 1852. From a microscopical examination of the blood-vessels and circulation in the ears of the Long-eared Bat, I have ascertained that, different from what I discovered to be the case in the wings, the veins of the ears are unfurnished with valves, and are not endowed with rythmical contractility, and that the onward flow of blood in them is consequently uniform. I ought, perhaps, to qualify the statement that the veins of the ear are not endowed with rythmical contractility, by saying, that I think I noticed a very slight tendency to it, here and there in a vein, but so slight as not to have the smallest effect on the flow of blood. This observation regarding the ear of the Bat illustrates how that the heart’s action is sufficient of itself for the circulation of the blood in the body generally; but that being sufficient for that only, the supplementary force of rythmical con-