500 



suggest the possibility of a causal relation between them. If we 

 could accept as true the statement often met in text-books that in 

 development the body of the pancreas at first extends vertically up- 

 ward in the dorsal mesogastrium, later descending gradually into a 

 horizontal position, then the variation in form could be easily ex- 

 plained. We need only suppose that the descent of the pancreas be 

 arrested at varying levels by meeting the duodeno-jejunal flexure and 

 the splenic flexure at corresponding points. In this way the various 

 forms of the body of the pancreas might easily be produced. This 

 hypothesis, however, seems to me quite doubtful. In several earlier 

 specimens that I have examined, the body of the pancreas, although 

 lying free in the mesogastrium, and not yet in intimate relation with 

 duodeno-jejunal and splenic flexures, did not show a vertical position. 

 On the contrary, it extended outward and upward or downward in a 

 variable direction much as in later foetuses. The figures by Bro- 

 MAN (3) and by His (6) of numerous reconstructions including the 

 earliest stages in the formation of the pancreas likewise disprove the 

 idea of a primitive vertical position of the pancreatic body. It would 

 seem rather that from the first the body of the pancreas extends 

 outward, in practically the same direction in which it later becomes 

 fixed. 



As to the form of the body of the pancreas (as seen in cross 

 section of the pancreas) there are but few references in the litera- 

 ture. Trolard (14) describes the body of the pancreas in the foetus 

 and infant as a flattened cylinder, with antero-superior and postero- 

 inferior surfaces. This statement I have not been able to confirm. 

 His (7) in his paper containing the first description of the triangularly 

 prismatic form of the adult pancreas, mentions also that in a foetus 

 of about five months he found the body of the pancreas prismatic, 

 with posterior, anterior and inferior surfaces, measuring 5 mm, 4 mm, 

 and 3 to 3,5 mm, respectively. Of thirty-five foetuses, varying from 

 5 cm to 53 cm in length, which I have examined with reference to 

 this point, twenty- eight, or 80 % of the total number, showed the 

 body of the pancreas to be triangularly prismatic throughout. In four 

 it was partly prismatic (in three of the four on the inner half of the 

 body) and partly flattened dorso-ventrally. In only three of the 

 thirty-five cases was the body of the pancreas entirely flattened, the 

 inferior surface being absent. Often where the body is flattened, the 

 mesocolon is not attached to the antero-inferior border of the pan- 

 creas, as usual, but is attached to the dorsal body wall below the 

 pancreas. This attachment may prevent the development of the in- 



