United States or Saint Martin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
An understanding of the characteristics of embryological thought at the beginning of the seventeenth century may enhance appreciation of later developments. During the latter part of the sixteenth century, the study of embryology was, for obvious reasons, most often considered within the province of anatomy and obstetrics.
Seeing, for instance, that the oldest known mammals, reptiles, and fish strictly belong to their own proper classes, though some of these old forms are in a slight degree less distinct from each other than are the typical members of the same groups at the present day, it would be vain to look for animals having the common embryological character of the Vertebrata, until beds far beneath the lowest Silurian strata are discovered a discovery of which the chance is very small.
But surely it is at least as logical to infer, that the importance of the embryo and the significance of embryological similarities may not be so great as the physiologist is disposed to believe. So with regard to human institutions.
We see why certain characters are far more serviceable than others for classification; why adaptive characters derived from rudimentary parts, though of no service to the beings, are often of high classificatory value; and why embryological characters are often the most valuable of all.
If this structure be the soul-endowed one of man, the vital principle imparted is that which fashions the epithelial tools, and uses them, as well in laying the embryological foundation, as in crowning its work with that many-colored "dome of thought flashing the white radiance of eternity." Mr.
Indeed, during the more intense and active part of our existence, in the earliest stages, that is to say, of our embryological life, we could probably have turned our protoplasm into feathers instead of hair if we had cared about doing so.
We are thus not entirely without clues to the origin of the more advanced animals we find when the fuller geological record begins. Further embryological study, and possibly the discovery of surviving primitive forms, of which Central Africa may yet yield a number, may enlarge our knowledge, but it is likely to remain very imperfect.
The development of the degraded, aberrant Arachnidan Pentastomum accords, in some important respects, with that of the intestinal worms. The Leptus-form larva of Julus, with its strange embryological development, in some respects so like that of some worms, points in that direction, as certainly as does the embryological development of the egg-parasite Ophioneurus.
One of the greatest stylists of English prose, Browne was also a physician and a student of generation who deserves our attention as an early chemical embryologist pointing the way to a form of embryological investigation prominent in the last half of the seventeenth century.
Browne's embryological opinions are found particularly in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, The Garden of Cyrus, and in his unpublished Miscellaneous Writings. Browne, a well-read man, was educated at Oxford, Montpellier, Padua, and Leyden, and he was thoroughly imbued with the teaching of the prophets of the "new learning."
Word Of The Day