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XVIII. On the Ultimate Secreting Structure, and on the Lams of its Function. 

 By JOHN GOODSIR, M.W.S., Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons, Edinburgh. 



(Read 21st March 1842.) 



MALPIGHI was the first to announce that all secreting glands are essentially 

 composed of tubes, with blind extremities. MULLER, by his laborious researches, 

 has brought this department of the anatomy of glands to its present comparatively 

 perfect condition. PURKINJE announced his hypothesis of the secreting function 

 of the nucleated epithelium of the gland ducts, but made no statement to shew 

 that he had verified it by observation. SCHWANN suggested that the epithelium 

 of the mucous membranes might be the secreting organ of these surfaces. HENLE 

 described minutely the epithelium cells which line the ducts of the principal 

 glands and follicles, but did not prove that these are the secreting organs. The 

 same anatomist has stated, that the terminal extremities of certain gland ducts 

 are closed vesicles, within which the secretion is formed, and which contain 

 nucleated cells. HENLE has not, therefore, verified the hypothesis of PURKINJE, 

 although he is correct in stating that the terminal vesicles of certain gland ducts 

 are closed. It will be shewn, in the course of this paper, that the secretion is not 

 formed, as HENLE has asserted, in the closed vesicles, but in the nucleated cells 

 themselves. 



The discrepant observations of BOEHM and KRAUSE on the glands of PEYER, 

 were in some measure reconciled by HENLE, who referred them to the same class 

 of structures, as the closed vesicular extremities of the ducts of compound glands. 

 Dr ALLEN THOMSON has made the important observation, that the primitive con- 

 dition of the gastric and intestinal gland is a closed vesicle. WASMANN de- 

 scribed the structure of the gastric glands in the pig ; and his description will be 

 fully explained by the observations and views contained in the present paper. 

 HALLMAN has given a detailed account of the testicle of the ray, which closely re- 

 sembles that of the Sgualus cornubicus, as described in another part of this com- 

 munication. He found the vesicles closed, but did not detect the mode of de- 

 velopment of the spermatozoa, or the continual growth of the gland itself. None 

 of the recent observations on the development of the spermatozoa have proved, 

 that the vesicles, in which they are formed, are the epithelium cells of the ducts of 

 the testicle. I am indebted to Dr ALLEN THOMSON for directing my attention to 

 a notice in VALENTINE'S Repertorium, 184], of a Dissertation by ERDL, de Heli- 



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