Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society Volume 4 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 Excerpt: ...of the lungs, and the connection of the arterial and venous system of either body with different hearts, are evidently causes which tend to the same effect. For without this, or something equivalent, the circulation which is now one for the whole mass, would have been two, a distinct and independent circulation for each body. There is a description of a human monster, in many respects resembling the present, given by Brugnoni in the sixth Volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Turin: and another by Duvernoy in the third Volume of the Commentaries of the Petersburgh Academy. They had, like ours, the head, neck, and upper part of the trunk, semi-double; four arms and four legs. They were both formed of the union of two females. In the Turin paper no description is given of the circulation, except that there were two hearts, enclosed in their proper pericardia, with their veins and arteries. In the Petersburgh case, the circulation entirely differed from ours, but yet was single for the whole mass. There were two hearts, one much more perfect than the other: which supplied the greatest number of arteries, as the two aorta?, and received the greatest number of veins. The imperfect heart, after supplying a portion of the arteries of the head and lungs, and receiving some of the veins, anastomosed by its descending aorta, with the principal vessel of the other heart, and by a large venous trunk with the descending cava of the same. This case of Duvernoy, as far as the circulation is concerned, approximates to one lately described by Barkow, Chap. n. No. 6059 of the Berlin Museum: two males, with the brains nearly distinct. I know indeed of no recorded instance of a human monster with a circulation nearly similar to that which I have described. But I suspect the ...