lister’s TRAVELS IN FRANCE.
21
I was to fee Monfieur Verney at his apartment at the upper end of the royal phy-fic garden ; but miffing my vifit, went up with a young gentlemen of my lord ambaf-fador’s retinue, to fee Mr. Bennis, who was in the differing room, working by him-feif upon a dead body, with its breafl open and belly gutted: there were very oddthings to be feen in the room. My companion, it being morning, and his fenfes veryquick, and vigorous, was ftrangely furprifed and offended ; and retired down the flairsmuch fader than he came up. And indeed, a private anatomy room is to one notaccuftomed to this kind of manufacture, very irkfome, if not frightful; here a bafketof differing inftruments, as knives, faws, &c. And there a form with a thigh and legflayed, and the mufcles parted afunder: on another form an arm ferved after thefame manner. Here a tray full of bits of flefh, for the more minute difcovery of theveins and nerves ; and every where fuch difcouraging objeCls. So, as if reafon andthe good of mankind did not put men upon this ftudy, it could not be endured: forinftinct and nature mod certainly abhors the employment.
I faw Monfieur Merrie, a molt painful and accurate anatomid, and free and com-municative perfon, at his houfe Rue de la Princeffe. His cabinet confided of twochambers: in the outward were great variety of fkeletons ; alfo entire preparations ofthe nerves ; in two of which he fhew r ed me the midake of Willis, and from thencegathered, that he was not much ufed to diffeCl with his own hand. The pia matercoating the fpinal nerves but half way down the back where it ends: the dura matercoating the lowermod twenty pair. Which, Willis, (as he faid ) has otherwife re-ported.
But that which much delighted my curiofity, was the demondration of a blown anddried heart of a foetus; alfo the heart of a tortoife.
In the heart, of a fetus, he fhewed it quite open, and he would have it that therewas no valve to the foramen ovale ; which feemed equally open from the left ventri-cle to the right,- as the contrary : that its diameter well near equalled that of theaorta: that the two arteries w-hich afcend up into the two lobes of the lungs, (andare the ramifications of the pulmonic artery, after it has parted with the canal of com-munication, which goes betwixt the pulmonic artery, and the lower or defendingbranch of the aorta) both put together, far exceed, if not double, the diameter ofthe aorta itfelf.
He therefore, not without good reafon, affirms, that of all the blood which the venacava pours into the right ventricle of the heart, and is thence in a fetus forced up intothe pulmonic artery, a great part is carried by the canal of communication into the de-fending trunk of the aorta, and is fo circulated about the body, the lungs (as to thatpart) being wholly flighted : alfo thac of the two remaining thirds of the blood, which iscarried about the lungs, when it comes down the pulmonic vein, that which cannot bereceived by the aorta,, (ana all cannot, becaufc the aorta is much lefs than the twobranches of the pulmonic artery put together; is therefore dilcharged back throughthe foramen ovale into the right ventricle of the heart, and fo thrown up again withthe reft of the blood, coming from the vena cava. So that one part of the two re-maining parts of the blood is daily carried about the body, as in an adult fetus, anda third part only circulates in the lungs, paffing by the body or grand circulation.
That all this is done to abbreviate and reduce the circulation to a lefier compafs, iscertain ; and fo for the fame reafon and end, that other leffer circulation of the liveris flighted by the blood, which returns from the placenta, by a canal of communica-tion betwixt the porta and the vena cava.
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