Dr. Burnett on the Renal Organs of the Vertebrata. 385 
In the foregoing account, [have preferred not to burden the 
general text with a reference to the history and criticism of 
some of the most important as well as disputed points connected 
with this subject. These can better be discussed by them- 
selves. 
The most important of these points is the character, relations, 
and connections of the Malpighian body. ‘This secreting organ 
of the kidney had long been recognized by both the older and 
the more modern observers, but its intimate structure and its con- 
nections with the other parts of the renal substance as the fune- 
tional secreting organ, were first successfully made out and pub- 
lished by Bowman* in a memoir which has since become classic 
on this subject. I may here mention that it is quite a remarkable 
historical fact that more than fifty years before, Schunalask yt ex- 
pressed the view that these bodies were the source of the urinary 
secretion and had direct connection with the uriniferous tubes. 
Myxinoid Fishes, where he describes the kidney as consisting of 
sac-like deverticula from a main tube or ureter, terminating ce-» 
vessels. The value of this discovery was not appreciated until 
Bowman (ignorant, however, at this time of Miller’s investiga- 
tions on this point) published the next year his memoir. ‘To 
owman, therefore, we seem indebted for the first full exposition 
of the secreting structure of the kidneys of Vertebrata. 
PRowman’s doctrine was, that the Malpighian body is the infun- 
dibuliform expansion of the uriniferous tube, and that the glom- 
erulus or tuft of blood-vessels lies enclosed freely in this expan- 
sion, being composed of a tortuous loop, the two component 
Vessels entering at the same point which is generally opposite or 
nearly so to the point of insertion of the uriniferous tube. The 
Malpighian body thus composed, Bowman maintained, is the ex- 
clusively secreting structure of the kidney. _'T'hese are the essen- 
tial features of the results advanced, and I need not enter into 
the details of a memoir so well known as this. 
Results so valuable in physiology, were, of couse, examined 
by different investigators on every side. Reichert,$ in his report 
Upon the progress of Microscpical Anatomy for 1842, enters into 
4 Critical discussion of this subject. He denies that the urinife- 
Tous tubes end in the capsule, and regards this last as a distinct 
and separate formation. He also denies the presence of ciliated 
epithelium in the Malpighian body, and the uriniferous tubes. 
é 
