THE SUPRARENAL GLANDS. 617 



molecules. Of the nerves at that period I saw nothing. In a newly-born 

 Rabbit, Ecker observed no appearance of follicles, whilst in a foetal Calf, 

 1 foot 6 inches long, he found them very distinct, but small (O05-0'15 mm ). 

 As regards the functions of the suprarenal glands, in the absence of 

 all physiological indications, arid so long as the course of the nerves in 

 them is not much more accurately known, only very general observa- 

 tions can at'present be offered. I consider the cortical and medullary 

 substances as physiologically distinct. The former may, provisionally, 

 be placed with the so-termed "blood-vascular glands," and a relation 

 to secretion assigned to it ; whilst the latter, on account of its extremely 

 abundant supply of nerves, must be regarded as an apparatus apper- 

 taining to the nervous system, in which the cellular elements and the 

 nervous plexus either exert the same reciprocal action as they do in the 

 gray nerve-substance, or stand in a relation as yet wholly unascertained, 

 towards each other. (For a more detailed account vid. Mikros. Anat. 

 II. 2, zw. Halfte.)* 



* [The former and more recent researches of Leydig (" Anatomisch-histologische Unters. tib. 

 Fische u. Reptilien," 1853) appear satisfactorily to show the identity of the suprarenal glands 

 of the Mammalia, with the yellow, vascular bodies seated, either on the kidney itself and 

 its ernulgent veins, or at a greater distance from those glands, on the veins near the epididy- 

 mis or ovaries, or upon the sympathetic nerve. The study of these more simple forms has 

 also thrown very considerable light upon the structure and true import of the more compli- 

 cated organ in the Mammalia. In the Salamander, the ganglia of the sympathetic have a 

 very remarkable structure, and contain cellular elements of two very distinct kinds. Each 

 ganglion has a tunic of connective tissue which sends septa into, the interior, which is thus 

 divided into distinct and occasionally, perfectly separate compartments. The cells of both 

 kinds are enclosed in these compartments, and are never intermixed in one and the same. 

 In some of the compartments, or as they might almost be termed, vesicles, the cells are 

 large, clear, and finely granular, with a vesicular nucleus and very transparent nudeolus. 

 From some of these cells, nerve-fibres are distinctly seen to proceed, and they would appear 

 to be of the bipolar kind of ganglion- or nerve-cells. The other kind of cells, contained in 

 perfectly distinct compartments, are much smaller and their contents of a peculiar dirty 

 yellow color, owing to which the perfectly transparent nucleus is rendered very distinct. 



These two kinds of cells occur in very variable proportions in different ganglia. Now, if 

 the dirty yellow-colored ganglion-globules of one of these sympathetic ganglia be compared, 

 side by side, with the contents of one of the yellow bodies on the veins, or of the yellow 

 granular masses on the kidney, it will be at once apparent, that by a gradual transforma- 

 tion, they directly pass into the fatty, granular cells of the so-termed suprarenes. And the 

 same transformation may take place even in the sympathetic ganglia. 



According to 'Leydig, the cortical substance of the suprarenal capsules of the Mammalia 

 corresponds to the yellow, granular and striped suprarenal bodies of Fishes and Amphibia; 

 whilst the medullary substance of the Mammalian organ, which is abundantly supplied with 

 nerves and cells, very like the ganglion-globules, represents the other divisions of the sym- 

 pathetic ganglia: whence he concludes that Bergmann's view, according to which the 

 suprarenal capsules are closely related to the nervous system, is undoubtedly correct, and 

 that those organs bear the same relation to the ganglia of the sympathetic nerves, as the 

 pituitary body bears towards the brain. Besides this relation to the nervous system, how- 

 ever, they have an intimate one with the vascular; and are, therefore, always pervaded by a 

 very close capillary plexus. But in any case, he says, the supi'arenal bodies must be re- 

 moved from the category of the so-termed blood- vascular glands, which would then include 

 only the thyroid and thymus, or should probably be abolished altogether, as an unmeaning 

 term. TRS.] 



