A blast from the past

Sir John Struthers, MD, LLD, FRCSE (1823-1899) occupied the chair of human anatomy in the University of Aberdeen with distinction for 26 years.

Although a human anatomist Struthers had, as a young man, been much influenced by the teaching of Robert Knox. Knox himself, having studied under Cuvier in Paris, was inevitably an exponent of the comparative approach to anatomy, comparing human anatomy with that of fish, amphibian, reptiles, birds and other mammals.

Struthers lived in an exciting time for biologists. Charles Darwin's ideas on the evolution of species by natural selection was still the subject of intense debate and there was a great need for hard evidence that species really did change with time. Vestigial, apparently functionless organs were offered as one kind of evidence. The argument went that such organs would have been functional in an ancient ancestor but with time, and with a change in lifestyle, the organs had become less and less useful. As their utility declined they became reduced in size and in the fullness of time they might be expected to disappear altogether.

Whales have a number of vestigial structures that would have been fully functional in their land-living ancestors, including the pelvic girdle, the hind limbs and the finger muscles. Whales were a Godsend to the Darwinians and Struthers grasped it with both hands!

The forelimbs of whales, which are used for steering, are stiff and paddle like and the muscles of the fingers, although still present, are vestigial, much reduced, largely non-contractile and act more in the fashion of ligaments. Today's photograph shows Struthers' dissection of the wrist and fingers of a blue whale that had been found dead in the North Sea off Aberdeen on June 27th 1871. Struthers arranged for it to be towed into Peterhead Bay and then dissected it at low tide as it lay among the rocks.

I was too late home last night to post my blip of a new piece of public art at Aberdeen University but I have now back-blipped it.