Periscope of Medical and General Science in their Relations to Dentistry. [Volume: 2, Issue: 1, August, 1860, pp. 41-50]

PERISCOPE OF MEDICAL AND GENERAL SCIENCE.

45

Comptes Rendus de la Societe de Biologie, 1849. Whenever he excites
the nerves of taste by very salt, very sweet, or very spicy aliment, this
secretion is produced. It does'not depend upon mastication, for aliments
of little savor and long masticated do not give rise to it, while a very
sapid body held in the mouth a few minutes without mastication does so.
Barthez relates a case in which one side of the face sweated abundantly
on the application of a little salt to the same side of the tongue.(Journal de la Physiologie; Med Times and Gaz., June 23.)
"Man Scientifically Described.-In a recent lecture, delivered before
the Royal Society in London, by PROFEssoR OWEN, D.C.L., F.R.S., as
reported in the Engineer, he described man as a specimen of organic nature, as follows: The fourth and highest type of mammalian brain rises at
once, and without transitional rudiments of the hippocampus minor,
hinder horn of lateral ventricle, or concomitant lobe of cerebrum protruding backward beyond the cerebellum, to that marvelous structure
which is peculiar to our own species. The sole representative of the
archencephala is the genus homo. His structural modifications, more
especially of the lower limb, by which the erect stature and bipedal gait
are maintained, are such as to claim for man ordinal distinction on merely
external zoological characteristics. But his psychological powers, in
association with his extraordinarily developed brain, entitle the group
which he represents to equivalent rank with the other primary divisions
of the class mammalia, founded on cerebral characters. In this primary
group man forms but one genus-homo-and that genus, one order,
called bimana, on account of the opposable thumb being restricted to the
upper pair of limbs. The mammae are pectoral; the placenta is a single,
sub-circular, cellulo-vascular, discoid body.
"Man has only a partial covering of hair, which is not merely protective of the head, but is ornamental and distinctive of sex. The dentation of the genus homo is reduced to thirty-two teeth by the suppression
of the outer incisor and the first two premolars of the typical series on
each side of both jaws, the dental formula being:2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3
i. -- c. —, p.m. -, m.- -32.
2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3
All the teeth are of equal length, and there is no break in the series;
they are subservial in man not only to alimentation, but to beauty and
speech.
"The human foot is broad, plantigrade, with the sole not inverted, as in
the quadrumana, but applied flat to the ground. The leg bears vertically
on the foot; the toes are short, but with the innermost longer and much
larger than the others, forming a "hallux" or great toe, which is placed
on the same line with, and cannot be opposed to, the other toes; the pelvis is short, broad, and wide, keeping the thighs well apart, and the neck
of the femur is long and forms an open angle with the shaft, increasing
the bases of support for the trunk. The whole vertebral column, with
its slight alternate curves, and the well-poised, short, but capacious
sub-globular skull are in like harmony with the requirements of erect
position.
"The widely separated shoulders, with broad scapnlae and complete
clavicles, give a favorable position to the upper limbs, now liberated from