104 Malpighi and the Physiology [lect. 



to organs as well as from organs ; and the ideas just sketched 

 were in large measure based on the assumption of this double 

 venous flow and ebb, to and fro. Hence, when the proof 

 came that in each organ blood flowed to the organ through 

 the arteries alone, through the organ from the arteries to the 

 veins, and away from the organs along the veins always in one 

 direction all these old views demanded reconsideration. 



We shall have to consider some of the glands again from 

 the point of view of the uses of their juices, when we come to 

 discuss the development of the more chemical side of physiology. 

 Meanwhile we may treat them from the point of view of the 

 mechanism of secretion and of the relation of this to the vascular 

 system ; this was the point of view of Malpighi, who entered 

 very slightly, indeed hardly at all, in the discussion of chemical 

 problems. 



The first step was taken by John George Wirsung, who 

 though a Bavarian by birth held in the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century the once so famous chair of Anatomy at Padua. 

 In a letter to Riolan dated 1643, he described the duct of the 

 pancreas which he had discovered the year before. He speaks 

 of its entrance into the duodenum close to the mouth of the 

 biliary duct, and of its ramifications in the body of the pancreas. 

 He says that he found it easy to pass a style through from the 

 body of the gland into the duodenum, but difficult to pass the 

 style from the duodenum into the duct, that the duct is present 

 in man at all ages, that he found it in all the animals which he 

 had examined, and that it could not be either an artery or a 

 vein, since it never contained blood, but on the contrary was 

 often filled with a nearly colourless fluid which like bile stained 

 a silver style. 



Wirsung's pupil John Maurice Hofmann claimed the dis- 

 covery as his own, as one made by himself and laid hold of 

 by his master ; but there is no satisfactory evidence of this. 

 Wirsung met some years afterwards with a tragic death, being 

 shot as he was entering his house at night ; the legend states 

 that a quarrel about the discovery of the duct was the cause 

 of the murder, but it seems to have been the result of some 

 private grudge. 



