ANATOMICAL AND PATHOLOGICAL 

 OBSERVATIONS.* 



"Although it shew not the agent, yet it sheweth a rule and analogy in 

 nature, to say that the solid parts of animals are endued with attractive powers, 

 whereby, from contiguous fluids, they draw like to like ; and that glands have 

 peculiar powers attractive of peculiar juices." BERKELEY. 



"Even herein consists the essential difference, the contradistinction, of an 

 organ from a machine ; that not only the characteristic shape is evolved from 

 the invisible central power, but the material mass itself is acquired by assimi- 

 lation. The germinal power of the plant transmutes the fixed air and the ele- 

 mentary base of water into grass or leaves ; and on these the organiflc principle 

 in the ox or the elephant exercises an alchemy still more stupendous. As the 

 unseen agency weaves its magic eddies, the foliage becomes indifferently the bone 

 and- its marrow, the pulpy brain or the solid ivory. " COLERIDGE. 



" The greater part of my share of these Anatomical and 

 Pathological Observations will be already, to a certain extent, 

 familiar to those who attended my lectures, in the theatre of 

 the Eoyal College of Surgeons, in summer 1842, and winter 

 1842-3. 



" The Memoir on the Secreting Structures is reprinted in 

 a modified form from the Transactions of the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh for 1842, and that on the Intestinal Villi from 

 the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal of the same year. 

 Those on the Placenta and Lymphatic Glands were read in 

 the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh in 1843, but were not sub- 



* The thirteen succeeding Memoirs were published by Macphail, Edinburgh, 

 1845, in an octavo volume, entitled Anatomical and Pathological Observations, 

 and were preceded by the accompanying preface. (Eos.) 



