CHAPTER III.

DISCOVERY OF THE MOTION OF THE CHYLE, AND CONSEQUENT SPECULATIONS.

IT may

Sect. 1.-The Discovery of the Motion of the Chyle.

have been observed in the previous course of this History of the Sciences, that the discoveries in each science have a peculiar physiognomy: something of a common type may be traced in the progress of each of the theories belonging to the same department of knowledge. We may notice something of this common form in the various branches of physiological speculation. In most, or all of them, we have, as we have noticed the case to be with respect to the circulation of the blood, clear and certain discoveries of mechanical and chemical processes, succeeded by speculations far more obscure, doubtful, and vague, respecting the relation of these changes to the laws of life. This feature in the history of physiology may be further instanced, (it shall be done very briefly), in one or two other cases. And we may observe, that the lesson which we are to collect from this narrative, is by no means that we are to confine ourselves to the positive discovery, and reject all the less clear and certain speculations. To do this, would be to lose most of the chances of ulterior progress; for though it may be, that our conceptions of the nature of organic life are not yet sufficiently precise and steady to become the guides to positive inductive truths, still the only way in which these peculiar physiological ideas can be made more distinct and precise, and thus brought more nearly into a scientific form, is by this struggle with our ignorance or imperfect knowledge. This is the lesson we have learnt from the history of physical astronomy and other sciences. We must strive to refer facts which are known and understood, to higher principles, of which we cannot doubt the existence, and of which, in some degree, we can see the place; however dim and shadowy may be the glimpses we have hitherto been able to obtain of their forms. We may often fail in such attempts, but without the attempt we can never succeed.

That the food is received into the stomach, there undergoes a change of its consistence, and is then propelled along the intestines, are obvious facts in the animal economy. But a discovery made in the course of the seventeenth century brought into clearer light the sequel of this series of processes, and its connexion with other functions. In the year 1622, Asellius or Aselli' discovered certain minute vessels, termed lacteals, which absorb a white liquid (the chyle) from the bowels, and pour it into the blood. These vessels had, in fact, been discovered by Eristratus, in the ancient world, in the time of Ptolemy; but Aselli was the first modern who attended to them. He described them in a treatise entitled De Venis Lacteis, cum figuris elegantissimis, printed at Milan in 1627, the year after the death of the author. The work is remarkable as the first which exhibits colored anatomical figures ; the arteries and veins are represented in red, the lacteals in black.

3

2

4

Eustachius, at an earlier period, had described (in the horse) the thoracic duct by which the chyle is poured into the subclavian vein, on the right side of the neck. But this description did not excite so much notice as to prevent its being forgotten, and rediscovered in 1550, after the knowledge of the circulation of the blood had given more importance to such a discovery. Up to this time, it had been supposed that the lacteals carried the chyle to the liver, and that the blood was manufactured there. This opinion had prevailed in all the works of the ancients and moderns; its falsity was discovered by Pecquet, a French physician, and published in 1651, in his New Anatomical Experiments; in which are discovered a receptacle of the chyle, unknown till then, and the vessel which conveys it to the subclavian vein. Pecquet himself, and other anatomists, soon connected this discovery with the doctrine, then recently promulgated, of the circulation of the blood. In 1665, these vessels, and the lymphatics which are connected with them, were further illustrated by Ruysch in his exhibition of their valves. (Dilucidatio valvularum in vasis lymphaticis et lacteis.)

Sect. 2.-The Consequent Speculations. Hypotheses of Digestion. THUS it was shown that aliments taken into the stomach are, by its action, made to produce chyme; from the chyme, gradually changed

1

1 Mayo, Physiology, p. 156.

s Cuv. Hist. p. 34.

2 Cuv. Hist. Sc. p. 50.

4 Ib. p. 365.

in its progress through the intestines, chyle is absorbed by the lacteals; and this, poured into the blood by the thoracic duct, repairs the waste and nourishes the growth of the animal. But by what powers is the food made to undergo these transformations? Can we explain them on mechanical or on chemical principles? Here we come to a part of physiology less certain than the discovery of vessels, or of the motion of fluids. We have a number of opinions on this subject, but no universally acknowledged truth. We have a collection of Hypotheses of Digestion and Nutrition.

5

I shall confine myself to the former class; and without dwelling long upon these, I shall mention some of them. The philosophers of the Academy del Cimento, and several others, having experimented on the stomach of gallinaceous birds, and observed the astonishing force with which it breaks and grinds substances, were led to consider the digestion which takes place in the stomach as a kind of trituration. Other writers thought it was more properly described as fermentation; others again spoke of it as a putrefaction. Varignon gave a merely physical account of the first part of the process, maintaining that the division of the aliments was the effect of the disengagement of the air introduced into the stomach, and dilated by the heat of the body. The opinion that digestion is a solution of the food by the gastric juice has been more extensively entertained.

Spallanzani and others made many experiments on this subject. Yet it is denied by the best physiologists, that the changes of digestion can be adequately represented as chemical changes only. The nerves of the stomach (the pneumo-gastric) are said to be essential to digestion. Dr. Wilson Philip has asserted that the influence of these nerves, when they are destroyed, may be replaced by a galvanic current. This might give rise to a supposition that digestion depends on galvanism. Yet we cannot doubt that all these hypotheses,-mechanical, physical, chemical, galvanic-are altogether insufficient. "The stomach must have," as Dr. Prout says," "the power of organiz

5 Bourdon, Physiol. Comp. p. 514.

¤ Müller (Manual of Physiology, B. iii. Sect. 1, Chap. iii.) speaks of Dr. Wilson Philip's assertion that the nerves of the stomach being cut, and a galvanic current kept up in them, digestion is still accomplished. He states that he and other physiologists have repeated such experiments on an extensive scale, and have found no effect of this kind.

Bridgewater Tr. p. 493

ing and vitalizing the different elementary substances. It is impossible to imagine that this organizing agency of the stomach can be chemical. This agency is vital, and its nature completely unknown."

CHAPTER IV.

EXAMINATION OF THE PROCESS OF REPRODUCTION IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS, AND CONSEQUENT SPECULATIONS.

IT

Sect. 1.-The Examination of the Process of Reproduction in Animals.

T would not, perhaps, be necessary to give any more examples of what has hitherto been the general process of investigations on each branch of physiology; or to illustrate further the combination which such researches present, of certain with uncertain knowledge;of solid discoveries of organs and processes, succeeded by indefinite and doubtful speculation concerning vital forces. But the reproduction of organized beings is not only a subject of so much interest as to require some notice, but also offers to us laws and principles which include both the vegetable and the animal kingdom; and which, therefore, are requisite to render intelligible the most general views to which we can attain, respecting the world of organization.

The facts and laws of reproduction were first studied in detail in animals. The subject appears to have attracted the attention of some of the philosophers of antiquity in an extraordinary degree: and indeed we may easily imagine that they hoped, by following this path, if any, to solve the mystery of creation. Aristotle appears to have pursued it with peculiar complacency; and his great work On animals contains1 an extraordinary collection of curious observations relative to this subject. He had learnt the modes of reproduction of most of the animals with which he was acquainted; and his work is still, as a writer of our own times has said," "original after so many copies, and young after two thousand years." His observations referred principally to the external circumstances of generation: the anatomical examination was

Bourdon, p. 161.

2 Ib. p. 101.

left to his successors.

Without dwelling on the intermediate labors, we come to modern times, and find that this examination owes its greatest advance to those who had the greatest share in the discovery of the circulation of the blood;-Fabricius of Acquapendente, and Harvey. The former3 published a valuable work on the Egg and the Chick. In this are given, for the first time, figures representing the developement of the chick, from its almost imperceptible beginning, to the moment when it breaks the shell. Harvey pursued the researches of his teacher. Charles the First had supplied him with the means of making the experiments which his purpose required, by sacrificing a great number of the deer in Windsor Park in the state of gestation: but his principal researches were those respecting the egg, in which he followed out the views of Fabricius. In the troubles which succeeded the death of the unfortunate Charles the house of Harvey was pillaged; and he lost the whole of the labors he had bestowed on the generation of insects. His work, Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium, was published at London in 1651; it is more detailed and perfect than that of Fabricius; but the author was prevented by the unsettled condition of the country from getting figures engraved to accompany his descriptions.

Many succeeding anatomists pursued the examination of the series of changes in generation, and of the organs which are concerned in them, especially Malpighi, who employed the microscope in this investigation, and whose work on the Chick was published in 1673. It is impossible to give here any general view of the result of these laborious series of researches: but we may observe, that they led to an extremely minute and exact survey of all the parts of the fœtus, its envelopes and appendages, and, of course, to a designation of these by appropriate names. These names afterwards served to mark the attempts which were made to carry the analogy of animal generation into the vegetable kingdom.

5

There is one generalization of Harvey which deserves notice. He was led by his researches to the conclusion, that all living things may be properly said to come from eggs: "Omne vivum ex ovo." Thus not only do oviparous animals produce by means of eggs, but in those which are viviparous, the process of generation begins with the developement of a small vesicle, which comes from the ovary, and which exists before the embryo: and thus viviparous or suckling-beasts, not

3 Cuv. Hist. Sc. Nat. p. 46.

4 Ib.

p. 53.

5 Exerc. lxiii.