220 SPECIAL HISTOLOGY. 



[In the investigation of the suprarenal glands, the larger 

 Mammalia ought, in the first place, to be chosen, and not till 

 afterwards should they be studied in Man. The cortical por- 

 tion is readily examined when its elements contain but little 

 fat, and, above all, perpendicular sections of fresh specimens, or 

 of such as have been hardened in alcohol and in chromic acid, 

 which are afterwards to be rendered transparent by soda, are to 

 be recommended. The medullary substance, even in animals, 

 is very easily disintegrated, so that its elements are either not 

 to be seen at all in the normal state, or only partially, although 

 they are occasionally very beautifully displayed without any 

 addition, as well as in chromic-acid preparations. In animals, 

 the nerves are very easily discerned in fine sections, after the 

 addition of soda ; and when their external visible points of 

 entrance are exactly hit upon in the making of the section, 

 their course through the cortical substance is readily brought 

 into view. For the vessels, injections should be employed, which 

 are best effected in the Sheep or sucking Pig, and which readily 

 succeed when made, as well from the arteries as from the non- 

 valvular veins.] 



Literature. — Nagel, 'Diss, sistens ren. succent. mammal, 

 descript./ Berol., 1838, and Mull. 'Arch./ 1836; C. Bergmann, 



Now, if the dirty yellow-colored ganglion-globules of one of these sympathetic ganglia 

 be compared, side by side, with the contents of one of the yellow bodies on the 

 veins, or of the yellow granular masses on the kidney, it will be at once apparent, tbat 

 by a gradual transformation, they directly pass into the fatty, granular cells of the 

 so-termed suprarenes. And the same transformation may take place even in the sym- 

 pathetic ganglia. 



According to Leydig, the cortical substance of the suprarenal capsules of the 

 Mammalia corresponds to the yellow, granular and striped suprarenal bodies of 

 Fishes and Amphibia; whilst the medullary substance of the Mammalian organ, 

 which is abundantly supplied with nerves and cells, very like the ganglion-globules, 

 represents the other divisions of the sympathetic ganglia: whence he concludes 

 that Bergmann's view, according to which the suprarenal capsules are closely 

 related to the nervous system, is undoubtedly correct, and that those organs bear 

 the same relation to the ganglia of the sympathetic nerves, as the pituitary body 

 bears towards the brain. Besides this relation to the nervous system, however, 

 they have an intimate one with the vascular ; and are, therefore, always pervaded 

 by a very close capillary plexus. But in any case, he says, the suprarenal bodies 

 must be removed from the category of the so-termed blood-vascular glands, which 

 would then include only the thyroid and thymus, or should probably be abolished 

 altogether, as an unmeaning term. — Eds.] 



