 Reference Base  Richard Owen and the discovery of the parathyroid glands |
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Cave, A.J.E., 1953. Richard Owen and the discovery of the parathyroid glands: vol. 2, pp. 217-222, figs. 1-3
 | In: Underwood, E.A. Science, medicine and history, essays of the evolution of scientific thought and medical practice, written in honour of Charles Singer. London etc., Oxford University Press: vol. 1, pp. i-xxxii, 1-563; vol. 2, pp. i-viii, 1-646 |
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| Location: |
Captive - Europe |
| Subject: |
Captivity - Zoo Records |
| Species: |
Indian Rhino |
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Owen's anatomy of the animal living 1834-1850. It was on 24 May 1834 that the Zoological Society of London acquired its first specimen of the Great Indian Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis). This animal, a male, reached the Society's menagerie on 20 September 1834, wherein it lived until its death, at about twenty years of age, on 19 November 1849, when it was anatomized by Richard Owen, at that time Hunterian Professor and Conservator of the Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The anatomy of this rare species being then but very imperfectly known, Owen welcomed the opportunity thus provided, as is evident from the following passage in a letter to one of his sisters:
'Amongst other matters time-devouring, and putting out of memory mundane relatives, sisters included, has been the decease of my ponderous and respectable old friend and client the rhinoceros. I call him 'client' because fifteen years ago I patronised him, and took it upon my skill, in discerning through a pretty thick hide the internal constitution, to aver that the beast would live to be a credit to the Zoological Gardens, and that he was worth the iooo guineas demanded for him. The Council had faith, and bought him, and he has eaten their hay, oats, rice, carrots and bread in Brobdignagian quantities daily ever since, and might have gone on digesting, had he not, by some clumsy fall or otherwise inexplicable process, cracked a rib; said fracture injuring the adjacent lung and causing his demise. His anatomy will furnish forth an immortal 'Monograph', and so comfort comes to me in a shape in which it cannot he had by any of my brother Fellows.'
Owen's jesting prophecy was amply fulfilled, for the memoir 'On the anatomy of the Indian Rhinoceros (Rh. unicornis)' resulting from his investigation remains the classic paper on the subject. The protracted and laborious dissection was carried out at the Royal College of Surgeons (where the Conservator then had resident quarters), Owen's wife recording in her diary that 'as a natural consequence' of this animal - - - of rhinoceros (defunct) on the premises'. The work of dissection and drawing proceeded apace during the winter months of 1849-50,16 and on 12 February 1850 Owen communicated the resultant monograph to a meeting of the Zoological Society. This paper was published as the third article in the fourth volume of the Society's Transactions, which volume, covering the period January 1851 to September 1862, bears the terminal date of 1862 - a point which has led Rolleston and possibly others astray. For in those early days of the Zoological Society's publications, the individual papers comprising any particular volume of its Transactions appeared separately, under dates anterior to the terminal volume date. Thus Owen's rhinocerotine memoir was published, not in 1862 as commonly supposed, but full ten years earlier, viz. on 2 March 1852, a point of importance in connexion with priority in the matter of the discovery of the parathyroid glands.
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