XXXIV INTRODUCTION. * 



Several cases have occurred, and Bichat relates one 

 which happened in his own amphitheatre, where there 

 was a general displacement of the digestive, the circu- 

 latory, the respiratory, and the secretory viscera. The 

 stomach, the spleen, the sigmoid flexure of the colon, 

 the point of the heart, the aorta, and the lung with two 

 lobes, were all on the right side. But the liver, the 

 coecum, the base of the heart, the vense cavse, the vena 

 azygos, and the lung with three lobes were on the left 

 side. All the organs placed beneath the middle line, 

 as the mediastinum, the mesentery, the duodenum, the 

 pancreas, the division of the trachea, were reversed. 

 Latterly I have had occasion to observe, in our own 

 dissecting rooms, two cases of the caput coli removed 

 from the ri^ht iliac into the left iliac region; the colon 



O O * 



\vas of the common size and length, and being confined 

 to the left side of the abdomen, formed there a loop, 

 which ascended into the left hypochondriac region, and 

 then descended as usual. In these cases, as there was 

 no transverse mesocolon, the duodenum had all the 

 coats of the other intestines; and was not attached to 

 the front of the right kidney and to the spine. One of 

 these was an adult female subject of considerable cor- 

 pulency, the other a corpulent male. 



Another difference between organic and animal life 

 exists in the mode of action of their respective organs. 

 Each of the organs of animal life being double, our sen- 

 sations are the more exact, as there exists between the 

 two impressions, from which they result, a more perfect 

 correspondence. We see badly when the images trans- 

 mitted to the brain are derived through eyes of unequal 

 strength. Without knowing this law as theorists, we 

 instinctively show its influence in shutting one eye 

 while looking through a convex glass; whereby we pre- 

 vent a confusion of images arising from two impres- 

 sions of unequal force, concerning the same body : when 



