THE STRUCTURAL UNIT AND GROWTH OF THE 

 PANCREAS OF THE PIG^ 



GEORGE W. CORNER 



Assistant in Anatomy, Johns Ho'pkins University 



NINETEEN FIGURES 



The conception of the formation of the body from a series of 

 repeated units, has been studied along three main Unes. The 

 first, that which has to do with gross anatomy, early became a 

 special science, transcendental anatomy; and the vertebra as a 

 unit of bodily organization was carried to fantastic lengths by 

 Oken and Goethe. With the work of Schleiden and Schwann, 

 and the progress in microscopy, attention was called to the cell 

 as the unit of structure. The third, and latest, aspect of the 

 subject lies in the borderland between gross and microscopic 

 anatomy. Since the discovery of the liver-lobule by Wepfer in 

 1664, evidence has been accumulating to show that many organs 

 of the body are formed from small masses of tissue, which, regu- 

 larly repeated, compose the whole organ. The first grosser 

 divisions of organs, the lobes, were made out by the earlier anat- 

 omists. When fine dissections, and later the microscope, un- 

 veiled more minute divisions in glands, the word 'lobulus,' dimin- 

 utive of 'lobus,' entered the vocabulary. In the course of time, 

 the word has come to have a double meaning. With some, 'lob- 

 ule' is, as with the older observers, merely a vague descriptive 

 term applying to a small mass of tissue limited by connective 

 tissue; with others, it is a term of accurate scientific connotation, 

 so that arguments have arisen as to whether this or that part of 

 an organ is 'the lobule.' 



This is the case in writings upon the pancreas, to which the 

 word seems first to have been applied by Albrecht von Haller, 



^ Aided by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 



207 



THE A^^ERICA^^ journal of anatomy, vol. 16, no. 2 



