The Bridgewater Treatises were a series of books, the outcome of the will of the Reverend Henry Francis, Earl of Bridgewater, who died in 1829, bequeathing a sum of 8000 pounds, which should be paid to the person or persons chosen to write and publish 1000 copies of a work on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God as manifested in the creation. The result was eight works on animal and vegetablephysiology, astronomy, geology, the history, habits, and instincts of animals, etc, which at one time enjoyed great popularity. The names of the writers are Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Kidd, Dr. Whewell, Sir Charles Bell, Dr. Roget, Dr. Buckland, Reverend William Kirby, and Dr. Prout. Research Bridgewater Treatises
In physiology, homologous means corresponding in type of structure; thus, the humanarm, the foreleg of a horse, the wing of a bird, and the swimming-paddle of a dolphin or whale, being all composed essentially of the same structural elements, are said to be homologous, though they are adapted for quite different functions. Research Homologous
Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish inventor. He was born in Edinburgh in 1847 and died in 1922. He was educated at Edinburgh and in Germany, and settled in Canada in 1870. In 1872 he went to the United States and introduced for the education of deaf-mutes the system of visible speech contrived by his father Alexander Melville Bell. He became professor of vocal physiology in Boston University, and exhibited his telephone, designed and partly constructed some years before, at the Philadelphia exhibition in 1876. Research Alexander Graham Bell
Andrew Combe was a Scottish physician. He was born in 1797 at Edinburgh and died in 1847. He was educated at the Edinburgh High School, and afterwards for the medical profession at the university there. In 1822 he commenced practice at Edinburgh, and had considerable success. In 1838 he was appointed one of the physicians extraordinary to the queen in Scotland. His chief works are: Observations on Mental Derangement (1831), Principles of Physiology (1834), Physiology of Digestion (1836), and A Treatise on the Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy (1840). Like his brother George Combe he was a zealous phrenologist. Research Andrew Combe
Augustin Pyrame De Candolle was a Swiss botanist. He was born in 1778 at Geneva in 1778 and died in 1841. He took up the study of medicine at Geneva and Paris, where be attracted the notice of Cuvier and Lamarck, whom he aided in various scientific researches. After returning to his native city he again visited Paris, and took his medical degree, selecting as the subject of his thesis the medical properties of plants. In 1804 he lectured in the College of France on vegetablephysiology; and the following year published an outline of his course, under the title of Principes de Botanique, prefixed to the third edition of Lamarck's Flore Francaise. In this outline he laid the basis of the system of classification which he afterwards developed in larger and more celebrated works. In 1808 he obtained the chair of botany in the faculty of medicine at the University of Montpellier. In 1816 he returned to Geneva, where a chair of natural history was expressly created for him, and where he continued for many years to extend the boundaries of his favourite science by bis lectures and publications. His chief works are: L'Histoire des Plantes Grasses;
Regni Vegetabilis Systema Naturale (incomplete ); Theorie Elementaire de Botanique; Organographie Vegetale; Physiologie Vegetale; and Prodromus Systematis Naturalis, the latter completed by his son Alphone, also an eminent botanist and member of the French Institute. Research Augustin De Candolle
Claude Bernard was a French physiologist. He was born 1813 and died in 1878. He studied at Paris and held in succession chairs of physiology in the Faculty of Sciences, the College of France, and the Museum. Amongst his many works may be cited his Researches on the Functions of the Pancreas, 1849; on the Sympathetic System, 1852; Experimental Physiology in its Relation to Medicine, 1855 to 56 ; On the Physiological Properties and Pathological Alterations of the various Liquids of the Organism, 1859; and his Nutrition and Development, 1860. Research Claude Bernard
Claudius Galenus (Claudius Galen) was an ancient Greek medical writer and physician. He was born in 130, at Pergamus in Asia Minor and died in 200. His father, Nicon, an architect and mathematician, gave him a careful education, and he studied under physicians in Smyrna, Corinth, Alexandria, etc, afterwards visiting Cilicia, Phoenicia, and Palestine. He returned in 103 to Pergamus, where he received a public appointment, but five years later went to Rome, and there acquired great celebrity by his cures.
Driven thence by envy, he again travelled for some time and resumed his labours in his native town, but was soon after invited to Aquileia by the Emperors Marcus Aurelins and Lucius Verus in 169.
He followed Marcus Aurelius to Rome, and appears to have remained there for some years before finally retiring to Pergamus. The closing part of his life, however, is obscure. One Arabic writer says that he died in Sicily, and Suidas states that he died at the age of seventy, and accordingly in the year 200 or 201, but it is not improbable that he lived longer.
The writings attributed to Galen include eighty-three treatises acknowledged to be genuine, forty-five manifestly spurious; nineteen of doubtful genuineness, and fifteen commentaries on different works of Hippocrates, besides a large number of short pieces and fragments, probably in great part spurious. The most valuable of his works were those dealing with anatomy and physiology, and he was the first to establish the consultation of the pulse in diagnosis and prognosis. Untill the middle of the 16th century his authority in medicine was supreme. Research Claudius Galen
Emil DuBois-Reymond was a German physiologist, and an especial authority on animal electricity. He was born in 1818 at Berlin 1818 and died in 1896. He studied theology, geology, and latterly anatomy and physiology, and became professor of physiology in the University of Berlin in 1858. His principal publication is Researches in Animal Electricity. Research Emil DuBois-Reymond
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Bridgewater Treatises
