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Hoboken’s valves

Anatomia secundinæ humanæ (Anatomy of the human afterbirth), by Nicolaas Hoboken. Printed in Utrecht by Johannes Ribbius, 1675. Lower Library, K.19.7

detail of an illustration of a umbelical cord

Nicolaas Hoboken (1632–1678) was a professor of medicine and mathematics, now best known in relation to his discoveries and theories about the umbilical cord. After the discoveries of Fabricius and Harvey, it had become clear that previous, Galenic beliefs about the flow of blood through the umbilical arteries could not be accurate.1

Hoboken was the first to illustrate the vessels of the umbilical cord, dissecting them carefully and then drawing the images for his text himself. He discovered folds inside the umbilical arteries, previously unknown, and theorised that they were valves to help with the movement of blood. These came to be known as the valves or nodes of Hoboken.2

Hoboken’s ‘valves’ have been the source of some controversy. It is now generally agreed that there are no valves in the umbilical arteries, but the exact nature and purpose of the folds which Hoboken identified have historically been the subject of some debate.3 It is now theorised that these are rings which contract in order to close off the arteries after birth.4

His study also covered the placenta, and fetal membranes, and was incredible in its detail, although he did mistakenly claim that there was no exchange of blood between the mother and the fetus.

Our copy of this work was donated to Caius by C. S. Sherrington, an eminent neurophysiologist and a Caian. Sherrington went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1932.

Witness to the Black Death << Hoboken’s valves >> A working book for an idler

  1. Lawrence D. Longo and Lawrence P. Reynolds, Wombs with a View: Illustrations of the Gravid Uterus from the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2016), 72.
  2. Thomas F. Baskett, ‘Hoboken, Nicolaas (1632–1678): Folds of Hoboken’, in Eponyms and Names in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 183–84.
  3. Longo and Reynolds, Wombs with a View, 72.
  4. G. Röckelein and A. Scharl, ‘Scanning Electron Microscopic Investigations of the Human Umbilical Artery Intima’, in Vichows Archiv 413, no. 6 (1988): 555–561.

Gallery

Engraved illustration of a placenta with canals and veins highlighted by different letters.
Engraved illustration of a part of the placenta, section highlighted with different letters.
Illustrated title page shows a baby lying on a table, with umbilical chord and placenta still attached. In the background, the mother can be seen asleep in a four poster bed.
Title page showing the full title of Hoboken's 'Anatomia Secundinae Humanae in Latin.
A page from the book with the Gonville and Caius bookplate stuck to it, above which is a handwritten note reading 'presented to Gonville and Caius College by Professor C. S. Sherrington, 1913.'
A bookplate showing the the book once belonged to Joshua Brookes of the Theatre of Anatomy, Blenheim Streets. The bookplate depicts a figure holding a brang in one hand and a snake in the other, confronting a box of snakes.