TRANSACTIONS 



MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



VOLUME III. 



I. — Observations on the Nature of Capillaries, and on the mode of 

 arrangement of those in the Gills of Fishes. By John Quekett, 

 Esq., Assistant Conservator of the Museum, and Demonstrator 

 of Histology at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 



(Read May 19th, 1847.) 



From the time of De Graaf, Ruysch, Lieberkuhn and other cele- 

 brated anatomists, the art of injecting the minute blood-vessels of 

 animals and of the human subject with mercury, and with coloured 

 fluids by means of a syringe, has been much practised both in this 

 country and abroad, and the science of Anatomy has been wonder- 

 fully advanced by its use. 



The first anatomist who appears to have applied the syringe to the 

 filling of the blood-vessels was Regnerus de Graaf, a Doctor of Me- 

 dicine, who lived about the middle of the seventeenth century ; an 

 engraving and full description of the syringe used by him was pub- 

 lished in the year 1667, in a small treatise, entitled ' Tractatulus de 

 usu Syphonis in Anatomia.' Some authors claim the credit of the 

 invention for Swammerdam, who is said to have first employed it in 

 1667. The fluids used by De Graaf were by him termed tinctures, 

 and were coloured with copper, or with the juices of the leaves of 

 violets or roses, or a solution of gamboge and indigo. He does not 

 state whether the vessels so filled were dried and preserved, the chief 

 object he desired being to trace more readily the different ramifica- 



TRANS. MIC. SOC. VOL. III. B 



