Page:Physiological Researches upon Life and Death.djvu/35

Rh All the organs placed under the median line, such as the mediastinum, mesentery, duodenum, pancreas, and the division of the bronchiæ, were also reversed from their proper order. Several authors have spoken of these disorders of the viscera, but I know no example of it so complete as the present.

Let us now throw our eyes upon the organs of animal life, the senses, nerves, brain, voluntary muscles, larynx, &c.; all here is exact, precise, and rigorously determinate in form, size, and position. Varieties of conformation, in these, are seldom or never seen; if they should exist, the functions are disturbed: while they remain the same in organic life, notwithstanding the different alterations of the parts.

This difference between the organs of the two lives, is evidently in proportion to the symmetry of such as the slightest change of conformation disturbs, and to the irregularity of others with which the different changes are closely connected.

In animal life, the play of each organ is immediately dependant upon its resemblance with its fellow of the opposite side, if it be double, or to the uniformity of conformation in its two symmetrical halves, if it be simple. Hence may be conceived the influence which organic changes have upon the derangement of the functions.

But this will become more evident, when I shall have pointed out the connexions which exist between the symmetry or irregularity of the organs, and the harmony or discordance of the functions.