162 Sylvius and his Pupils. [lect. 



In the year 1653, just as Sylvius was rising into note, there 

 was born at Schaffhausen in Switzerland one Jean Conrad 

 Peyer, who studying at Basel and Paris, practised in his native 

 town, dying there in 1712. 



In 1677, five years after Sylvius's death, Peyer published a 

 little tract, Exercitatio anatomica niedica de glandulis intestino- 

 rum, in which he described certain new glands, scattered over 

 the intestine, which he says he had discovered in 1673. In 

 this work he gives a very careful account of the bodies ever 

 since known by his name, indicating their position on the free 

 border of the intestine, and their increased abundance in the 

 lower part of the small intestine, in the ileum, and distin- 

 guishing between the single solitary glands and the patches 

 of agminated glands. He describes them however as being 

 provided, each, with a minute pore opening into the interior 

 of the intestine, through which when the gland is pressed a 

 pale fluid exudes. He discusses at some length whether the 

 new glands are conglomerate (secretory) in nature, or conglo- 

 bate (lymphatic), and decides in favour of the former view on 

 the grounds that each gland possesses a duct, and is well 

 supplied with arteries, whereas no lacteals or lymphatics seem 

 to proceed from it, and indeed the lacteals arise from the 

 attached border of the intestine, whereas the glands in 

 question are found on the free border. 



He argues that the secretion from these glands must play 

 an important part in the digestion of food, and suggests that 

 they are more abundant in the lower part of the intestine 

 because as the food descends from the duodenum the efficacy 

 of the pancreatic juice must become more and more exhausted. 



This discovery by Peyer fitted in very well with another 

 discovery made a few years later by another Jean Conrad. 

 Jean Conrad von Brunner, born at Dieffenhofen in 1653, 

 the same year as Peyer, after studying and graduating at 

 Strassburg, and travelling in Holland, France, and England, 

 was in 1687 called to the chair of Medicine in Heidelberg. 

 He afterwards became Court physician at Dusseldorf, and 

 having had great success in practice died at Mannheim in 

 1727. 



