THE SEXUAL ORGANS. 247 



§ 204. 



Ovary , Parovarium. The ovaries, ovaria, are constituted 

 of special tunics, and of a stroma containing the ova, or the 

 parenchyma. The former consist of a peritoneal coat, which 

 covers all but the inferior border, and of a firm, white, fibrous 

 coat, the tunica albuginea s. propria, ^'"thick, which closely 

 invests the whole parenchyma, and is intimately connected with 

 it without any abrupt line of demarcation ; but does not send 

 any processes into the interior, like the corresponding coat of 

 the testis, with which, otherwise, it precisely corresponds in 

 structure. The stroma is a greyish-red substance, of tolerably 

 firm consistence, composed of a nucleated, 

 tough, fibrous, though not distinctly fibrillar, 

 connective tissue, in which are lodged the ovi- 

 sacs and the vessels of the organ. From the 

 inferior border of the ovary, where the vessels 

 enter, and ovi-sacs are never situated, the stroma 

 extends, in the form of a compact lamella, into 

 the interior of the ovary, from which it then 

 radiates, in larger and more slender bundles, 

 towards both surfaces and the free border of 

 the organ, so that, in a transverse section, a penicillar arrange- 

 ment is presented by them. The ovi-sacs, or follicles, usually 

 termed Graafian vesicles, folliculi ovarii s. Grafiani, s. ovi- 

 sacci, entirely closed, round follicles, from \" to 3'" in mean 

 size (fig. 263 a b), are imbedded in the more peripheral portions 

 of the stroma, so that, in a section, at all events, of well-developed 

 and normal ovaries, the parenchyma separates, as it were, into a 

 medullary and cortical substance, the latter of which only, as it 

 may be said, contains the follicles. Ovaries in that condition, 

 also, should alone be made use of, for the obtaining of a correct 

 notion of the size, position, and number of the Graafian follicles. 

 The latter amounts to 30 — 50 — 100 in each ovary, and in 

 many cases may reach 200 ; whilst in arrested or degenerated 



Fig. 263. Transverse section through the ovary of a woman dead in the fifth 

 month of pregnancy: a, Graafian follicle of inferior, and b, of the superior surface; 



c, peritoneal lamella of the lig. latum, continued upon the ovary, and coalescing with 



d, the /. albuginea ; in the interior, two corpora albicantia (old corpora lutea) are 

 visible ; e, stroma of the ovary. 



