The Hunterian oration for the year 1907 : being the sixty-third Hunterian oration since its foundation : delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons : On the objects of Hunter's life and the manner in which he accomplished them / by Henry T. Butlin.

  • Butlin, Henry T. (Henry Trentham), 1845-1912.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Hunterian oration for the year 1907 : being the sixty-third Hunterian oration since its foundation : delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons : On the objects of Hunter's life and the manner in which he accomplished them / by Henry T. Butlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    tion contains a comparison and suggests a wide range of study and an intimate knowledge on the part of the author, not only with the anatomy of this particular fish but with that of fishes generally. It is the same with No. 655 (intestine of a lizard) and with No. 712 (a portion of the intestine of a whale). The description of the former tells how the mesentery in this tribe of animals may be observed to be very simple; the intestine carries it forward immediately beyond the pylorus and runs along its right edge till it becomes colon or rectum; while the latter specimen is one of those from which Hunter drew up his account of the anatomy of the whale tribe, and is used as an example of the diffe- rences which are to be observed in the intestinal canals of the bottle-nose, the piked whale, the porpoise, etc. Ofttimes his study and observation of a prepara- tion induced him to experiment. This bottle con- tains the dissected alimentary canal of a large fly. It is an admirable specimen, well prepared and mounted. The organs of digestion, to quote the words of Hunter, are attended with a crop. It is possible that other persons were aware of this and had wondered why. But Hunter is not content with wondering; he must hiow whether the crop is a mere receptacle for food or whether it performs a function in digestion. And he tells us how he proved to his satisfaction that it is only a receptacle. He says : I kept some of these flies fasting for some time;