Page:Physiological Researches upon Life and Death.djvu/34

Rh the organs of the two lives; I shall merely observe that it enters essentially into the order of their phenomena, that the perfection of the animal functions should so depend upon the symmetry of their respective organs, that whatever should disturb this symmetry should have more or less influence upon the functions.

Hence no doubt arises the other difference between the organs of the two lives, namely, that Nature more rarely indulges herself in varieties of conformation, in animal, than in organic life. Grimaud has made this observation, without telling the principle, upon which the fact which it presents to us is founded.

The frequent variations of form, size, position, and direction of the internal organs, as the spleen, liver, stomach, kidneys, salivary organs, &c. cannot have escaped the remark of any one accustomed to dissections. So common indeed are these varieties in the vascular system, that scarce two subjects offer exactly the same disposition to the knife of the anatomist. Who does not know that the organs of absorption, the lymphatic glands in particular, are rarely found subjected to the same proportion of number, volume, &c. in two individuals? that the mucous glands have never a fixed and analogous position?

Nor is each system when separately examined only, found thus subject to frequent aberrations, but the totality even, of the organs of internal life, is sometimes found reversed from their natural order. During the last year, a child was brought to my amphitheatre, who had lived several years with a general confusion of the viscera of digestion, circulation, respiration, and secretion. On the right were found the stomach, spleen, the arch of the colon, the apex of the heart, the aorta, the two lobed lung, &c. On the left were seen the liver, the cæcum, the base of the heart, the venæ cavæ, the azygos, the three lobed lung, &c.