THE SPLEEN. 



141 



smooth muscles. What their nature is I cannot say, and 

 I can only add that they are also found coiled up in cell-like 

 bodies 1 (fig. 227 B). 



§167. 

 Malpighian corpuscles, the splenic corpuscles, Malpighian 

 corpuscles or vesicles, are white roundish bodies, which are im- 



Fig. 228. 



bedded in the red substance 

 of the spleen and are con- 

 nected with the smallest 

 arteries. They are constant 

 only in quite fresh and 

 healthy subjects; but not 

 at all, or rarely, in those 

 who die of disease, or after 

 long fasting. It hence be- 

 comes comprehensible that 

 Von Hessling found the 

 corpuscles only 116 times 

 in 960 examinations. In 

 subjects whose age was be- 

 tween the first and second 

 year, they were present in 

 every second individual ; 

 from the second to the tenth year, in every third; from 

 the tenth to the fourteenth, in every sixteenth; and from 

 the fourteenth onwards, only in every thirty- second. In 

 the bodies of those who die suddenly, as in consequence of 

 accidents, suicide, or judicial sentence (of the latter of whom 

 I have examined three cases), they are probably never absent; 

 and it is the same with the majority of children. In these 

 cases they are as numerous and as distinct as in Mammalia. 

 The size of the splenic corpuscles is liable to certain varia- 

 tions in Man and in animals and has hitherto, for the most 



Fig. 228. A portion of a small artery, with a branch covered with Malpighian 

 corpuscles. Dog, x 10. 



J [According to Mr. Wharton Jones (' British and Foreign Med-Chir. Review,' 

 Jan., 1853), these cells, containing "peculiar fibres," are nothing but the ordinary 

 nucleated fibres of the pulp " circularly coiled, the coil being maintained by a tena- 

 cious intercellular substance filling up the middle space." — Eds.] 



