Note 15 — PROLEGOMENA.

The consideration of the development of the human embryo in its minutest parts, progressively watched and carefully examined and described, as those parts appear in succession, appertains to transcendant physiology, and would be out of place in these Prolegomena to a work which is intended to supply my brethren with practical information, obstetrical as well as medico-forensic. It is sufficient for my purpose to mention (as I have endeavoured to do) the forms which the fœtus presents, its different sizes, and the weights which correspond with those forms. To those of my readers who take an interest in embryogenesy, I recommend the careful perusal of the various continental modern authors repeatedly named in these Prolegomena. Unfortunately, since Hunter and Home, there has not been a single British practical and experimental physiologist who has investigated this subject either originally or otherwise. This fact, not at all flattering to us, is no where placed in so strong a light as in Breschet’s very erudite and classical memoirs, entitled “Etudes anatomiques, physiologiques et pathologiques de l’Oeuf duns l’Espèce humaine” which that indefatigable inquirer has enumerated and analyzed every statement and experiment made on that subject by upwards of thirty physiologists, down to the present day; among whom there is not, since Hunter and Home, a single English name besides that of Dr. Burns, recorded.