18 BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE 



been a tendency to overdo this kind of material analy- 

 sis. Alexander Thomson split tliem np into cobwebs, 

 as you may see in the plates to Yelpeau's Surgical 

 Anatomy. I well remember how he used to shake 

 his head over the coarse work of Scarpa and Astley 

 Cooper, — as if Denner, who painted the separate hairs 

 of the beard and pores of the skin in his portraits, had 

 iq)oken lightly of the pictures of Rubens and Yandyk. 



Not only has little been added to the catalogue of 

 parts, but some things long known had become half- 

 forgotten. Louis and others confounded the solitary 

 glands of the lower part of the small intestine with 

 those which " the great Brunner," as Haller calls him, 

 described in 1687 as being found in the duodenum. 

 The display of the fibrous structure of the brain seemed 

 a novelty as shown by Spurzheim. One is startled to 

 find the method anticipated by Raymond Vieussens 

 nearly two centuries ago. I can hardly think Gordon 

 had ever looked at his figures, though he names their 

 author, when he wrote the captious and sneering arti- 

 cle which attracted so much attention in the pages of 

 the Edinburgh Review.* 



This is the place, if anywhere, to mention any ob- 

 servations I could pretend to have made in the course 

 of my teaching the structure of the human body. I 

 can make no better show than most of my predecessors 

 in this well-reaped field. The nucleated cells found 

 connected with the cancellated structure of the bones, 



* June, 1815. 



