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SOME POINTS IN THE ANATOMY OF THE DIGESTIVE 

 S YSTEM.i By A. Birmingham, M.D. , Professor of Anatomy, 

 CatlwHc University, Ireland. 



I HAVE recently carried out a systematic study of the digestive 

 system in a series of ten bodies specially hardened by the 

 injection of formalin, and entirely devoted to the purpose of 

 this research. With the same object I have examined several 

 other bodies hardened for different purposes ; and as in many 

 particulars my results are not in agreement with the accepted 

 descriptions of the parts concerned, it may be of interest to 

 submit some of them to this meeting, with the object of 

 eliciting the views and experiences of other workers in this 

 branch of anatomy. 



There is not, I am sure, in the mind of anyone who has 

 given it a fair trial, any doubt as to the value of the 

 ' formalin method ' of hardening bodies for the purposes of 

 topographical anatomy. I am aware that various objections 

 have been urged against it, but I am inclined to think that 

 these objections come solely from those who have not given 

 this reagent an unprejudiced trial. For the method I would 

 claim two great advantages : — In the first place, if properly 

 injected soon after death, it absolutely fixes the organs in the 

 position, form, and condition in which they were at the time of 

 injecting ; and as fixation during life is impossible, the next best 

 thing is fixation soon after death. Secondly, it is incomparably 

 superior to the ordinary method of examining the body without 

 hardening, and without fixation of any kind, in which the 

 opening up of the cavities, no matter how carefully done, is 

 certain to interfere with the shape and relations of the 

 contained viscera. It is also a oreat advance on the method of 

 frozen sections — valuable though it has been — for this 

 allowed of an examination of parts as seen only on one plane of 

 section, whilst the formalin method gives sections practically as 



^ Read at the Manchester meeting of the Anatomical Society, June 1900. 



VOL. XXXV. (N.S. vol. XV.) — OCT. 1900. C 



