0"T' LAERT> "! - USP

356 RECENT TIMES.
PIGHI, BELLINI and BERTIN investigated the structure of
the kidneys; while the knowledge of the sexual organs t
was advanced by W. COWPER who described the gland
named after him but known previously, by REINIER DE
GRAAF who described the follicles of the ovary, by D.
SANTORINI who submitted the corpora lutea to a more
careful examination, and especially by WILLIAM HUNTER
who made public the best observations upon the anatomy
of the testis and the first correct representations of the
changes undergone by the uterus during pregnancy.
Neurology remained on a lower level. STENO frankly ':
confessed that he knew nothing of the structure of the :
brain and opined that other anatomists were in much the, J
same position. He looked forward to nerve fibres being J
traced through the substance of the brain, but was himself;!
at the same time conscious of the difficulty of this invest!-j
gation and doubted whether such a thing would ever be ^
accomplished without special apparatus* WILLIS, the J
discoverer of the nervus accessorius, SYLVIUS, and HUM-1
PHREY RIDLEY furnished their contemporaries with good J
descriptions of the brain; J. J. WEPFER illustrated the
distribution of its blood-vessels; ViEUSSENS noticed the :
pyramids and the olivary bodies of the medulla oblongata,|
and made the discovery that the dura mater receives nerve 1 *
fibres from the trigeminus ;\ LANCISI drew attention to.
the distribution of fibres in the corpus callosum and
examined the structure of the pineal gland; MALPlGHr
made some remarks upon the distribution of the grey and*]
white substance of the brain and observed the passage
into the brain of collections of fibres from the spinal cord.J
With regard to the more minute structure of the substance^
of the brain no clear view was arrived at. As a rutef
anatomists embraced the hypothesis that the grey sub-|
* W. PLENKERS in the Maria-Laacher Stimmen 1884, vii, H. 25, 26.—TH.
PUSCHMANN in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse 1886, 26 November.
f R. VIEUSSENS: Neurographia universalis, Lugd. 1685, p. 82, 170.
X M. MALPIGHI : De cerebro in Op. omnia iii, 1 et seq.