Anatomical Observations

the feast of Easter, I was received as a guest, and in that class, in which he was concluding the sixth lecture from my arrival, I noticed a convenient opportunity to have animals suitable for anatomical exercise, I obtained from him permission to privately dissect the subjects I had bought, so that I might both turn over in my mind what I had observed so far from various men highly experienced in the art of Anatomy, and imitate it with my hand. And now, on the 7th of April, for that purpose, I was working alone in my study on a sheep's head that I had procured, intending to dissect the brain, when the veins and arteries running through the orifices catch me in their examination. While I explore them variously with a stylus, I feel myself striking the very teeth through some vessel carried into the ample cavity of the mouth. Wondering at the novelty of the thing, I call my host to hear his opinion, who, after he had first accused the force, and soon the playful nature of the anatomy, finally judged that Wharton ought to be examined more accurately.

§. 14. That salivary vessel arises, however, within the frequently named parotis conglomerata from several streamlets flowing into one channel, which from there, in the calf, as well as in the sheep, carried downwards, tends from the angle of the lower jaw to the fold sculpted into its lowest side, from where, rising obliquely forwards, it finally opens into the outer part of the mouth through a sufficiently ample opening sculpted at the highest and last of the papillae situated near the second molar. To be noted in it, besides its own tunic, are various nerve-cords, which, representing nothing but many filaments, are carried on both sides to its flanks, and here and there, by the aforementioned filaments, being joined to one another, embrace the middle duct. It is no wonder, therefore, that it is so difficult for a stylus to be pushed through the divided tunics into the cavity itself, since, clinging between the nerve-cords, it is impeded from further progress. If we consider its straight path in man, by which it is carried between the gland and the middle of the buccinator cheek muscle, it seems to be the same as the robust ligament which Asserius writes is born from the center of the buccinator outwardly, creeps through the bone of the cheeks, and terminates in a certain small and slender muscle directly opposite the cheek. Because I know the most distinguished President will deal with it in his commentaries on Vesalius, I will not add more here about how it is observed in man, although they do not differ much from the aforesaid.