Introductory address to the Anatomical Society of the University of Liverpool, delivered January 15th, 1904 / by William Mitchell Banks.

  • Banks, W. Mitchell (William Mitchell), 1842-1904.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Introductory address to the Anatomical Society of the University of Liverpool, delivered January 15th, 1904 / by William Mitchell Banks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Next year, in 1839, he read a paper to the British Association “ On the follicular stage of dentition in the “ ruminants, with some remarks on the process in the other “ orders of mammalia.” He there announced the fact that at an early period of embryonic life the cow and sheep possess the germs of canine and superior incisor teeth, the former existing as developed organs in two or three genera only of ruminants, the latter being found in the aberrant family of camels. It seems extraordinary that a plain country doctor should be doing work of this kind, but, as it happened, St. Andrews had not only its University with a Literary and Philosophical Society, but the county town of Cupar had its Literary and Philosophical Society also. Sir David Brewster was President of the St. Andrews Society, and that at once stamps the kind of society it was. Goodsir and Edward Forbes, anatomists and naturalists, were members of both. Other members of the scientific section were David Page (afterwards President of the Geological Society), Playfair, Adamson, Buist, and others of like mind, so that what is called jocularly the little Kingdom of Fife was well to the front in all that pertained to literature and science. Just imagine Goodsir reading this paper to the St. Andrews Society “ On the cephalic termination of the “ sympathetic nerve.” He used to delight to get on to this subject in a lecture, and I have often heard him become quite animated over it. He was a profound believer in the vertebrate theory of the skull, and made a most ingenious effort to arrange the upper parts of the sympathetic nerves in accord with this theory. The linear series of sympathetic ganglia running alongside the vertebral column he called centric, and those scattered throughout the viscera eccentric. That the sym- pathetic in the trunk was in harmony with what was then termed the cyclo-vertebral elements of the spinal column and intestinal canal seemed apparent. It was when he came to the skull and the cephalic extremity of the intestinal tube that the difficulty began. He traced the basilar portion of the occipital bone, the body of the sphenoid, the vomer and the inter- maxillary bones as part of the cyclo-vertebral system in the cranium, while in close connection with these lay the cranial portion of the alimentary canal. Admitting that the sympathetic cords united below in the ganglion impar on the coccyx, he held