EXTRACT VIII. A. 

 ON THE ORGANS OF NEURAL EXCRETION. 



The Pituitary and Pineal Glands in their Relationship with 

 Cerebro-Spinal Lymph Circulation and Excretion. 



IN this connection it appears possible and proper to assign 

 functions of great eliminative, or excretory, importance to 

 the curious and much debated structures known as the 

 pituitary (Fig. 29) and pineal glands. Thus the pituitary 

 gland, situated in the sella tursica^ and surrounded by an 

 extension of the venous circulation of the brain called 

 the circular sinus, consisting of a series of blood spaces or 

 " back-water pools," so to speak, into which we think the 

 more fluid and less effete contents of the contained 

 glandular organ can well and filter, and be carried away in 

 the blood streams issuing therefrom. 



The pituitary body is suspended from the infundi- 

 bulum, into which the third ventricle may be said to 

 drain through a narrow " pit " situated in a hollow in its 

 floor, the less fluid as well as the more solid residual 

 matter of the ventricular cavity, that matter being guided 

 hither by the ciliary activity of its endothelium and the 

 passive influence of gravitation. Situated thus it, the 

 pituitary body, must become the receptacle of a mixture 

 of materials, consisting of cerebro-spinal lymph, endo- 

 thelial cell debris, neuroglial oozings, and whatever else 

 obtains an entrance into it, which it must of anatomical 

 necessity dispose of, and this, we claim, must be its func- 

 tion ; and surely no mean function, yea, a function second 

 to none in the whole category of glandular functions in 



