Iviii ^'*otes to Tntrodiictory Lecture. 



'"'*'■•■■• ' • ' ■ > - 



out : for many years both these works excited great interest 

 and the anatomists of all Europe were zealous in verifying 

 their discoveries, and in testing their remarks by the dissec- 

 tion of living animals. At length Pecquet of Paris saw the 

 chyle actually flowing into the heart of a living dog in a 

 regular stream, and traced the source of this fluid to the com- 

 mon receptacle of the thoracic duct. He published his ac- 

 count in 1651 : Eustachius before had seen this duct, but did 

 not know the real use of it : he called it vena sine pari. Van 

 Home a Dutch professor laid claim to the merit of the same 

 discovery the following year. Eustachius had a century be- 

 fore discovered the same vessels in a horse, but he was igno- 

 rant of their use in the economy of the animal, or of their 

 origin. The honour of ascertaining both points was reserv- 

 ed for Pecquet. The discovery of another set of absorbents, 

 which arise from all the cavities of animal bodies soon fol- 

 lowed by the dissection of dogs, viz. in 1651 or 1652. These 

 were called lymphatics from the pellucid nature of their con- 

 tents, and were found to end with the laeteals in the thoracic 

 trunk. In later times, the same system of vessels was found by 

 various anatomists in all other animals that were examined, 

 of both land and water, and in the human brain by Mascagni 

 of Italy, from whose dissections a series of the most elegant 

 plates have been published. The merit of discovery of the 

 lymphatics in other parts of the body, besides the intestines, 

 was due to Bartholine and Rudbeck, who were contempora- 

 ries in the 17th century. The priority of time however by 

 a few months seems to belong to Rudbeck, although Bartho- 

 line first published his account of the lymphatics. 



Xote S3. 

 Dr. Edward Stevens of St. Croix : his experiments are 

 contained in his inaugural dissertation on digestion, Edin- 

 burgh, 1777 : a very* good abstract of them may be found la 

 Smeliie's idiilosophy of natural history. Dr. Stevens made 

 some of his experiments upon an Hungarian. 



