THE SUPRARENAL GLANDS. 215 



the middle, and in the lower and inner half, it amounts to as 

 much as V" or even V[" . In the dead human subject, the 

 cortical substance very readily becomes detached from the me- 

 dullary, when the suprarenal gland presents a cavity, frequently 

 occupying the entire organ, and containing a dirty, pultaceous 

 substance derived from the half disintegrated brown layer of 

 the cortex, mixed with blood, together with the less altered 

 medullary substance ; which, however, in more rare instances, 

 also becomes broken up. 



§ 193. 



Intimate structure. — The cortical substance presents, as a 

 foundation, a delicate mesh-work of connective tissue, which, 

 in connexion with the tunic and the thin, mutually connected 

 laminae proceeding from it, pervades the entire layer, and forms 

 the boundaries of very numerous, closely-approximated compart- 

 ments, 0*016 — 0*02'", or even 0-03"' in diameter, which extend 

 in a vertical direction from without to within, through the 

 entire thickness of the cortex. In these compartments is 

 lodged a granular substance, subdivided by delicate, oblique or 

 transverse dissepiments, into larger and smaller aggregations, 

 which Ecker describes as gland-follicles, 

 and as containing, within a structureless 

 membrane, a granular material mixed 

 with nuclei or even cells. But in these 

 " cortical cylinders" as I would term 

 them, I have, in most instances, noticed 

 nothing but rounded-angular cells, 

 0006 — 0'012"' in size, and believe that 

 Ecker, from the more rare occurrence 

 of true follicles, has been induced to 

 regard the compact aggregations of 



so-termed cells which occur in the interior of the cortex, 

 and which are 0*024 — 0*048 — 0*06'" long, as special follicles. 

 In fact, the cortical cells, which on the external and in- 

 ternal portions of the cortex are to be met with more isolated 

 in the compartments, are in its interior, closely united into 



Fig. 252. Portion of a vertical section through the cortex of the suprarenal body 

 in Man : o, septa of connective tissue ; b, cortical cylinder, whose composition out 

 of cells is more or less distinctly manifest ; x 300 diam. 



