V 



THE PANCREAS 



T_J ERE again Claude Bernard's name must be 

 ■*■ put first. Before him, the diverse actions 

 of the pancreatic juice had hardly been studied. 

 Vesalius, greatest of all anatomists, makes no 

 mention of the duct of the pancreas, and speaks 

 of the gland itself as though its purpose were just 

 to support the parts in its neighbourhood — ut 

 ventriculo ins tar substerniculi ac pulvinaris subjici- 

 atur. The duct was discovered by Wirsung, in 

 1642 : but anatomy could not see the things that 

 belong to physiology. Lindanus (1653) said, / 

 cannot doubt that the pancreas expurgates, in the 

 ordinary course of Nature, those impurities of the 

 blood that are too crass and inept to be tamed by the 

 spleen : and, in the extraordinary course, all black bile, 

 begotten of disease or intemperate living. Wharton 

 (1656) said, // ministers to the nerves, taking up 

 certain of their superfluities, and remitting them 

 through its duct into the intestines. And Tommaso 

 Bartholini (1666) called it the biliary vesicle of the 

 spleen. 



This chaos of ideas was brought into some sort 



42 



