Memoirs of John Abernethy / With a View of His Lectures, His Writings, and Character; with Additional Extracts from Original Documents, Now First Published

by George Macilwain

Until understood, how few could have guessed that mechanical pressure could have so modified the degree of heat necessary, as to exalt it to more than double, or reduce it to less than half; and again, how few would have looked for the force which, under common circumstances, governed the point at which water was thus converted into steam, in the pressure of the atmosphere; yet so mutually influential are these conditions—namely, heat and a certain pressure in modifying this change of form or matter—that some of Faraday's most interesting results in experimental chemistry (we allude to his reducing several gaseous bodies to the liquid form) were obtained by abstracting heat and increasing pressure.

It is of very great consequence to remember these interferences in relation to disease, because most diseases may be regarded as examples of them. Considered as "abstract wholes," as entities—diseases are necessarily unintelligible: but when looked at as natural processes obscured by interferences (if the inquiry be conducted with strict observance of those principles which are essential in all philosophical researches), they either at once become intelligible, or, at least, as open to investigation as any other facts in natural philosophy.

When we investigate the laws of nature with a view to the development of the sublime objects of natural theology, the concurrence of the various conditions, necessary to the most ordinary phenomenon, inclose the most irresistible proofs, from natural evidence, of the Unity of the Creator.

Regarded in the light of facts which we as yet may not be able to generalise, the cases here recorded by Abernethy are very interesting; although it is to be regretted that both cases were bodies brought in for dissection, in times when the circumstances baffled, if they did not forbid, any inquiry into the histories of them. It is lamentable to think of the state of the law with respect to Anatomy at that time.

Any surgeon who was convicted of mala praxis, resulting from ignorance of Anatomy, was severely fined, perhaps ruined; and yet so entirely unprovided were the profession with any legitimate means of studying Anatomy, that they could only be obtained by a connivance at practices the most demoralizing and revolting.

Bodies were, in fact, chiefly obtained by the nightly maraudings of a set of men, who, uninfluenced alike by the repulsions of instinct or the terrors of law, made their living by the plunder of grave-yards.

Many a tale of horror, no doubt, might be told on this subject.

Graves were very commonly watched; and severe nocturnal conflicts occurred, which were conducted in a deadly spirit, not difficult to imagine. We believe all this has passed away; there is no necessity now for such revolting horrors. The public began to think for themselves, the real remedy for abuses. But to our cases. Both were curious; the one was the body of a boy, who did not appear to have been imperfectly nourished, but in whom the alimentary canal was found to be less than one-fourth of its natural length, and in which also the relative length of its two grand divisions was reversed. The smaller in diameter, usually very much the longer, was so unnaturally short, as not to exceed in length more than one half of the more capacious but normally shorter division of the canal.

The other case presented a no less curious departure from the ordinary arrangement of parts than a reversed position of the heart; which, instead of being placed with its point as usual on the left side, was found to have that part situated on the right. In the natural condition of things, there is a difference on the two sides of the body, in the manner in which the large vessels are given off to supply the head and upper extremities. These differences existed, but were reversed; the arrangement of vessels ordinarily found on the right, being here on the left side, and vice versâ.

In all this, there would be nothing to prevent the heart from pumping the blood to all parts in the natural way. But another very singular arrangement was found in relation to the liver. To the unprofessional reader we should observe, that usually, whilst all other things are made, or secreted as we term it, from the purer or arterial blood; in the human body, the Bile is secreted from a vein which enters the liver for that purpose.