ON THE NOTCHES AND FISSUKES OF THE SPLEEN 

 AND THEIE MEANING. By F. G. Parsons, Lecturer 

 on Anatomy at St Thomas's Hospital, 



Through the kindness of the gentlemen in charge of the post- 

 mortem room I have lately been enabled to examine and sketch 

 113 spleens, and, as the arrangement of their notches rather modi- 

 fied my preconceived ideas, I have thought it worth while record- 

 ing them in some detail, together with a short account of the 

 embryology and comparative anatomy of the subject. 



Of course all material coming from the post-mortem room is 

 open to suspicion, and especially is this the case with viscera. 

 I have therefore been very careful to reject anything that was 

 regarded as at all pathological, and it seems to me that, if this 

 is carefully done, viscera from the .post-mortem room are less 

 likely to give false ideas than are those from the dissecting 

 room, because they have been examined by pathologists and 

 have not been subjected to injection or prolonged keeping; 

 moreover, all ages are proportionately represented. I have found 

 notches on the anterior, posterior and inferior borders of the 

 spleen as well as fissures on the parietal surface which often 

 have a very definite and characteristic arrangement. The 

 material on which I propose to generalise has been tabulated 

 in the accompanying seven columns, the youngest spleens being 

 placed first — (pp. 414-17). 



Col. No. 1 gives the number of notches found in the anterior 

 or ventral border, and the letters ' u,' ' m,' and ' 1 ' show 

 approximately whether these notches occurred in the upper, 

 middle or lower thirds of that border. 



In the second col. simple notches in the posterior or dorsal 

 border are recorded — that is to say, notches which are not pro- 

 longed into definite fissures. 



In the third col. are placed notches on the posterior border 

 which are continued into fissures on the parietal or diaphrag- 

 matic surface as in fig. 1. 



