THE STOMACH. 89 



§ 151. 



We have seen, that beside the glands, only a very scanty tissue 

 enters into the mucous membrane. Around their extremities 

 alone, do we find a dense, continuous, reddish layer 0*022 — 

 0-044'" in thickness, (Briicke) the muscular layer of the mucous 

 membrane, consisting of bundles of common connective tissue 

 and of smooth muscles, interwoven, the latter of which 

 cross one another principally in two directions, and, in 

 the Pig, even pass between the glands and into the plica 

 villosce. In man, we meet only with vessels, and an amor- 

 phous connective tissue, without elastic fibrils, interposed 

 between the glands, forming at the surface of the mucous 

 membrane, a clear, perfectly homogeneous stratum, the 

 structureless membrane of authors, which is continuous with the 

 membrana propria of the separate glandular tubes, but cannot, 

 like them, be isolated. 



The whole internal surface of the stomach from the cardia, 

 (where the tesselated epithelium of the oesophagus terminates 

 by a sharp notched edge), possesses a simple covering of 

 cylindrical cells, about O'Ol'" long on the average, which lie 

 immediately upon the outermost homogeneous portion of the 

 mucous membrane, without any interposed substance. During 

 life, this cylinder epithelium — whose other relations will be 

 treated of below, in describing the small intestine, where a layer 

 of exactly similar nature is to be met with — is closely united 

 with the mucous membrane, though not so intimately, but 

 that its elements are, at times, detached to a larger or smaller 

 amount, by the mechanical violence to which it is necessarily 

 occasionally subjected in the stomach. After death this takes 

 place so readily, that the cells can be seen in situ, in man, only 

 under very favorable circumstances. Perhaps, also, detach- 

 ment of the epithelium to a certain extent may take place 

 normally, in one way or another, during digestion ; at least, in 

 animals the quantity of loose epithelial cells is often very 

 great and they frequently almost entirely constitute the 

 mucous coating which covers the surface of the stomach. 



Besides the tubular glands, the stomach also contains, though 

 they are inconstant and vary very much in number, closed 

 follicles — the so-called lenticular glands, which are identical in 



