148 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



form and describes them entirely in the Aristotelean spirit: matter, that out 

 of which something is produced; form, the change in matter which serves a 

 given purpose; that which produces form is either nature or art. He emphati- 

 cally protests against the "physical" conception of form and matter which 

 the "philosophers" advance. His conclusions are formed on the scholastic 

 model, and the physiological problems that he sets up he solves by a purely 

 abstract method. Nevertheless, there are among his ideas one or two which 

 remind one of modern lines of thought, such as his belief that the evacu- 

 ation of the gall-bladder is caused by nervous irritability. And when it 

 comes to the lacteals, he shows a knowledge and a comprehension of Pec- 

 quet's and Bartholin's discoveries. He thus exhibits in his views, as often 

 happens in transitional periods, a mixture of old and new. 



Glisson's younger contemporary and friend Thomas Wharton was a 

 specialist pure and simple. Born in 161 4, likewise the son of a landowner, he 

 took the degree of doctor of medicine at Oxford and then practised in Lon- 

 don, finally becoming head of a hospital there and a highly reputed member 

 of the College of Physicians. He died in 1673. His fame as an anatomist rests 

 on his Adenographia, a work in which is given for the first time a comparative 

 account of the glands of the body. In this book Wharton seeks in the first 

 place to explain the actual term "gland" and assumes secretion to be the 

 essential criterion of it; he lays special stress on the difference between the 

 "viscera," or intestines, and the glands. The tongue is not a gland, but a 

 muscle; nor is the brain a gland, but a special, "precious" substance. As 

 belonging to the true glands he characterizes the digestive, lymphatic, and 

 sexual glands. Wharton discovered the exit of the submaxillary gland — it 

 now bears his name — and he also for the first time gave a detailed descrip- 

 tion of the pancreas. The kidneys, the testes, and the thyroids are also care- 

 fully described. With regard to the glandula fmealis, Wharton denies its 

 quality of a soul-organ, as maintained by Descartes; he considers it to be an 

 excretal gland, to which the nerves from the brain drain off waste products, 

 which are then removed by the blood-vessels — a curious conclusion in 

 regard to internal secretion, formed more than two centuries before this 

 process was established in our own time. The hypophysis, according to 

 Wharton, possesses similar functions, though with a different kind of eject- 

 ing apparatus. Wharton does little in the way of theoretical speculation; on 

 the other hand, investigation and discussion of disease conditions in the 

 glands play an important part in his work. 



A more weighty personality we find in Thomas Willis. The son of a 

 farmer, he was born in i6xi, studied in Oxford, and during that time fought 

 in the ranks of the Royal Army against the Parliamentary troops. Having 

 taken his medical degree, he worked as a medical practitioner until, in 1660, 

 upon the victory of the King's party, he obtained a professorship as a reward 



