James Jeffray: Observations on the heart and on the peculiarities of the foetus

James Jeffray, Regius Professor of Anatomy in the University of Glasgow (1790–1848), published his lectures on the heart as a monograph entitled Observations on the Heart and on the Peculiarities of the Foetus (Jeffray, 1835), in which he considered controversies about the adult heart, such as the arrangement of the coronary vessels and the function of the aortic and pulmonary sinuses, and about the fetal circulation. His sources were the works of Senac, Lower, Vieussens, Eustachius, Mery, Haller, Winslow, and Sabatier which were available from the Hunterian bequest. Jeffray supplemented his own material with Hunterian specimens for the illustrations. He supported the theory that blood from the superior and inferior venae cavae crossed in the right atrium, that from the superior cava being destined for the right ventricle and from the inferior passing through the foramen ovale to the left atrium. He also held that the valve of the inferior vena cava directed the bloodflow from that vessel to the foramen ovale. These views conflicted with those of John Bell (1763–1820), a successful Edinburgh anatomist and surgeon whose opinions are attacked several times in the publication. Regarding the placenta, Jeffray may have been deliberately vague about whether the fetal and maternal circulations are continuous or separate, an issue resolved by William Hunter in the previous century. Clin. Anat. 12:35–42, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.