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202 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
Bells, who, when demonstrating the cerebrum to his pupils, used to push the blow
pipe through the parietes of the ventricles, and exclaim, ’ This is the foramen of
Monro !’ However, it was at last conceded that there was a foramen, but that
it was known before Monro’s time ! yet we do not remember to whom the
honor of the discovery was generally attributed, but certainly not to Sweden-
borg. This gTeat man, however, was not always to be denied the credit which
was due to him, for a writer in the Intellectual Repository for 1824, page 170, took
up the cudgels, and proved Swedenborg’s title to the discovery, though up to
this date we do not remember any treatise on the brain, in which the author
even alludes to Swedenborg. Monro’s first intimation in public of his discovery,
was on the 13th of December, 1764, when he read a paper to the Phil. Soc. of
Edinburgh on the subject : but in his work, entitled ’ Observations on the
Structure and Functions of the Nervous System," he says, that he demonstrated the
foramen to his pupils as early as the year 1753. Monro allows that a commu-
nication was known to exist between these two ventricles and the third, long
prior to his time ; but he shows that it was never demonstrated or delineated in
the manner he had done, nor in any way that could convey any precise idea
concerning it
—* much less was implied the existence of the foramen.’ The
channel of communication, which was admitted by the anatomists, seemed to
be referred to the posterior, or back part of the lateral ventricles ; -whilst the
foramen Monro described, is situated at the anterior or front part of the ventricle.
Now, says the writer in the Repository, in the ’ Regnum Animale of Sweden-
borg,’ p. 207, the following striking observation occurs :—’ Foramina communi-
cantia in cerebro vocantur anus et vulva prseter meatum, sen emissarium lym-
phsB, quibus, ventriculi laterales inter se, et cum tertio, communicant,’—which
may be thus translated :
’ The communicating foramina in the cerebrum are
called anus and vulva, beside the passage or emissary canal of the lymph ; by these
the lateral ventricles communicate with each other, and with the third ventricle.’
This work was printed in 1744, or nine years prior to the earliest notice by Dr.
Monro, of the foramen in question ! The motion of the brain also, the first
description of which is attributed to John Daniel Schlichting, by Blumenbach in
his Inst. Physiol, 1 787, section 201 , was first noticed by Swedenbo rg. Blumenbach
refers to Schlichting’s Comment. Litter., Nov., 1744, p. 409. But the discovery
seems due to Swedenborg, as he fully described it in the *
(Economia Regni
Animalis,’ 1740, Nos. 349 and 458, which was published before Schlichting
wrote. This was noticed in the ’ Monthly Magazine’ for May, 1841, pp. 448,
460. The discovery amounted to this, that when the lungs shrink or empty
themselves in expiration, the brain rises ; but when they swell or expand them-
selves in inspiration, the brain sinks. The writer in the ’
Monthly Magazine’
says :
—
" * Another discovery of Dr. Wilson,* concerning the vacuum which takes
place when the blood is expelled from the contracted cavities, into which
vacuum, according to the common laws of Derivation, the neighboring blood
must rush, being prevented, by means of the valves, from regurgitating—is due
to Swedenborg.’
*’
In the * CEcononiia Regni Animalis,’ Swedenborg also gives a mechanical
*An Inquiry into the Moving Powers employed in the Circulation of the Blood. See also
Dr. Young’s Croonian Lecture in the Phil. Trans, for 1809.
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