iv] of Glands and Tissues. Ill 



became physician to Cosimo III. at Florence. He wrote several 

 books and achieved fame and fortune; but this discovery of 

 the urinary tubules, made in his teens, was his chief, perhaps 

 we may say his only valuable contribution to physiology, and 

 in this the hand with which he wrought was the hand of 

 Borelli. 



Lastly it must not be forgotten that in 1654 Glisson, to 

 whom I have already referred, and of whom I shall have to 

 speak more fully in a subsequent Lecture, published his work 

 on the Liver. In that work he gave a very careful description 

 of the anatomy of that organ, which though set forth in some- 

 what cumbrous, academic fashion, made a valuable contribution 

 to our knowledge, especially perhaps in all that relates to the 

 distribution of the vessels. We at the present day call these 

 researches to mind when we speak of Glisson's capsule, a 

 structure which he was the first accurately to describe. This 

 is what he says : " This structure was wholly unknown to the 

 " ancients and therefore has hitherto been without a name. I 

 "was the first (unless I am mistaken) to discover it, which 

 "I did twelve years ago when, at the mandate of the College 

 "of Physicians of London, I delivered a course of public 

 "lectures, and in preparation of that course removed the 

 "parenchyma from the livers of a large number of animals." 

 And he describes his method of tediously scraping away the 

 parenchyma. So far however as the intimate structure of the 

 secreting substance of the liver is concerned he left much 

 untouched, much indeed that he could not touch, seeing that 

 he made apparently no use of the microscope. He admits that 

 the parenchyma of the liver is the principal part since all other 

 structures seem simply subservient to it, and speaks of it as 

 exercising a straining action, of serving the purposes of a filter ; 

 but Vesalius had done this long before him. It strains off on 

 the one hand the bile, and on the other hand the pure blood ; 

 and the filtration or separation of the two humours takes place 

 he says in the following way : " It is very probable that parts 

 "or particles of which the parenchyma is composed are of 

 " different natures so as to be allied on the one hand to one of 

 " the humours to be secreted (the bile), and on the other hand 



