Page:Restorative medicine - an Harveian annual oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on June 21, 1871 (the 210th anniversary) (IA restorativemedic00cham).pdf/35

RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. 21 Messrs. Legros and Onimus this did not seem to accord with the economy of nature in working the way of fluids through other organic tubes. It was a wasteful expenditure of force. Spurred on by this thought, they sought, and they found, in the arterioles a regular peristaltic wave, an inter- mittent progressive muscular action, such as that which carries the morsels down the esophagus, rolls the mass round and round in the stomach, and passes it along the ilia. With a microscope they were able to follow this newly seen wave in the frog's web, then to detect it in the transparent part of the rabbit's ear, then to see it with the ophthalmoscope in the human retina. It seems to me that a very wide field indeed for experiment is opened by these observations. A knowledge of the action of remedies on this peristaltic circula- tion generally would form a new standing-ground for rational therapeutics; and the discoveries by Waller and Bernard of special systems of vaso- motor nerves, governing special parts, might be made practically useful.

It seems to me, also, that our various mechanical and other means of observation have arrived at a degree of perfection sufficient to allow of