Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
Not only in the systems of animal organs, but also in the vegetal
apparatus, we find a number of rudimentary organs, many of which we
have already noticed. In the alimentary apparatus there are the
thymus-gland and the thyroid gland, the seat of goitre and the relic
of a ciliated groove that the Tunicates and Acrania still have in the
gill-pannier; there is also the vermiform appendix to the caecum. In
the vascular system we have a number of useless cords which represent
relics of atrophied vessels that were once active as blood-canals--the
ductus Botalli between the pulmonary artery and the aorta, the ductus
venosus Arantii between the portal vein and the vena cava, and many
others. The many rudimentary organs in the urinary and sexual
apparatus are particularly interesting. These are generally developed
in one sex and rudimentary in the other. Thus the spermaducts are
formed from the Wolffian ducts in the male, whereas in the female we
have merely rudimentary traces of them in Gaertner's canals. On the
other hand, in the female the oviducts and womb are developed from the
Mullerian ducts, while in the male only the lowest ends of them remain
as the "male womb" (vesicula prostatica). Again, the male has in his
nipples and mammary glands the rudiments of organs that are usually
active only in the female.
A careful anatomic study of the human frame would disclose to us
numbers of other rudimentary organs, and these can only be explained
on the theory of evolution. Robert Wiedersheim has collected a large
number of them in his work on The Human Frame as a Witness to its
Past. They are some of the weightiest proofs of the truth of the
mechanical conception and the strongest disproofs of the teleological
view. If, as the latter demands, man or any other organism had been
designed and fitted for his life-purposes from the start and brought
into being by a creative act, the existence of these rudimentary
organs would be an insoluble enigma; it would be impossible to
understand why the Creator had put this useless burden on his
creatures to walk a path that is in itself by no means easy. But the
theory of evolution gives the simplest possible explanation of them.
It says: The rudimentary organs are parts of the body that have fallen
into disuse in the course of centuries; they had definite functions in
our animal ancestors, but have lost their physiological significance.
On account of fresh adaptations they have become superfluous, but are
transmitted from generation to generation by heredity, and gradually
atrophy.
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