THE VEINS OF THE ADRENAL. 
BY 
JEREMIAH S. FERGUSON, M.Sc., M. D. 
From the Histological Laboratory of Cornell University Medical College. 
New York, N. Y. 
WiTH 3 TEXT FIGURES. 
Within the past decade our knowledge of the functions of the adrenal 
giands, and of their relations to the rest of the economy, has been greatly 
enhanced by many careful chemical and physiological researches. Behe 
recent studies of Aichel (1), Wiesel (2, 3), Soulie (4), and others have 
placed the early development of the organ upon a fairly certain basis. 
These advances in the physiology and embryology of the organ have not 
as yet been accompanied by corresponding advances in our appreciation 
of its minute anatomy. Hence this branch of the subject is, at the 
present time, one of unusual interest. 
The intimate relation of the parenchyma of the adrenal to its blood- 
vessels, as shown by the general tendency to regard the organ as a true 
gland whose secretion enters its blood-vessels and leaves the organ 
through its efferent veins, makes it specially important that these vessels 
should be carefully studied and their structure and distribution accurately 
recorded. 
The exhaustive study of Flint (5), on the course of the adrenal vessels, 
based as it was upon carefully prepared reconstructions, leaves little to 
be desired along this line. The writer is, however, unable to find in the 
literature any reference to the minute structure of the veins of the adrenal, 
with the notable exception of Minot’s (6) article on sinusoids. 
To be sure Pfaundler (7) mentioned the occurrence, in the medulla of 
the adrenal, of venous vessels whose only wall consisted of endothelium. 
Gottschau (8) also, though omitting their description, has figured similar 
vessels in his Plate XVIII, Fig. 1. But as to the structure of the larger 
blood-vessels of the adrenal glands the literature seems to be entirely 
barren. 
The architecture of the arterial walls does not appear to offer any 
distinctive peculiarities, the tissues of which they consist being arranged 
in a manner precisely similar to that which characterizes the arteries of 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ANATOMY.—VOL. Y. 
