GLANDS. 139 



ch yma ; at the hilus of the organ it is reflected upon 

 its vessels, and accompanying them into its interior, 

 forms a sort of capsule of Glisson. 



Its parenchyma consists of a sort of coi^pus caver- p*mchyma. 

 no-sum, the trabeculse of which, fibrous in their nature, 

 are continuous by their extremities with the inner 

 surface of the proper coat of the organ, and in their 

 interspaces is a soft material very closely resembling 

 blood-clot, called the pulp of the spleen. There are 

 also certain spherical bodies connected with its arte- 

 ries, and called corpuscles of Malpighi, which form a 

 portion of the parenchyma of the organ. 



We have said that the fibrous coat of the spleen 

 was reflected upon its vessels, and constituted for 

 them a sheath or capsule, continuous, in its interior, 

 with the trabeculse. The splenic artery gives off 

 near its hilus, a certain number of branches, which, 

 as they penetrate the substance of the gland, con- 

 tinue independent of each other, and form, each one 

 of them, by its subdivisions, a sort of vascular brush. 

 Situated upon arterioles of from eVth to *Vth of a line 

 in diameter are the little rounded whitish colored 

 bodies already mentioned as the corpuscles of Mal- 

 pighi ; they measure from one-eighth to one-fourth 

 of a line in diameter. Their structure is identical 

 with that of the solitary glands of the intestinal 

 canal. They have a very delicate outer coat of con- 

 necting tissue, which is continuous with the sheath of 

 the artery upon which each corpuscle is situated, and 

 its contents are made up of the same elements that we 

 find in the interior of a lymphatic gland, viz., spheri- 

 cal cells of from 3 loth to rioth of a line in diameter, 



