the late Professor Rudolphi. 231 



thod of Linnaeus with that of Pallas. His diagnoses are sim- 

 ple, short, and distinct, like those of the great Swede ; in his 

 extended descriptions he always has especial regard to anatomy. 

 In his researches on intestinal worms, — on the Balcena rostrata 

 and longirnana, — on the Rana pi pa, and other osteological mo- 

 nographs; — in his writings on electrical fishes, whose nerves 

 and organs he understood better than any of his predecessors,- — 

 in his essays on the orang outang, and on the embryo of apes, 

 we remark this union of natural history, and anatomy : cha- 

 racteristic description of nature appears also again in his phy- 

 siology ; and what he says of the races of man, and of the 

 mental qualities of the two sexes, may be regarded as a model 

 of the natural-historical treatment of these subjects. 



The Transactions of the Academy of Sciences, contain a se- 

 ries of valuable treatises by Rudolphi. Those on comparative 

 anatomy are partly osteological, like some of those already 

 mentioned ; partly neurological, such as the essays on the elec- 

 tric eel and silurus ; and his observations on the sympathetic 

 nerves, in which he describes the portion of the syrnpathicus 

 only indicated by Sommering as running along with the arteria 

 vertebralis ; and partly myological, as the memoir on the ana- 

 tomy of the lion. Among his labours in pathological anatomy, 

 I would quote especially those on hydrocephalus, and on a hu- 

 man monster consisting of a mere head. In the last case, of 

 which I obtained two years ago a counterpart, he shewed, first 

 of all, how similar productions without a heart, which have 

 given rise to so many hypotheses, can be nourished, — inasmuch 

 as that head was united with the umbilical cord of a second 

 perfect foetus, and its vessels were branches of the vessels of the 

 umbilical cord ; which was also the case in the instance that 

 came under my own observation. His treatise on the hydroce- 

 phalus of the embryo, seems to me to be of still greater import- 

 ance ; for it explains a multitude of innate defects in the de- 

 velopment of the brain and skull, as proceeding from the same 

 source. I am surprised that Rudolphi, who brought many 

 facts of pathological anatomy under the same law, did not ap- 

 ply the idea of a secondary destruction or interruption of the 

 development also to the explanation of other defects, as he so 

 interpreted them, that the germ was only sufficient for the pro- 



