CHAPTER XXVIII. 



THE MAMMARY GLAND. 

 Br W. H. PORTER, M.D., and EDMUND C. WENDT, M.D., of New York City. 



General considerations. By virtue of its intimate associa- 

 tion with the function of reproduction, this organ occupies a 

 distinctly peculiar position among the glands of the body. In 

 the male it persists through life in the same rudimentary form 

 which characterizes the mamma of both sexes at birth. Only 

 in the female, and in her only at certain times, does this organ 

 attain its complete histological maturity. It may be borne in 

 mind, however, that in a few anomalous cases, male beings sup- 

 plied with fully developed mammary glands have been ob- 

 served. 



After conception, and as pregnancy advances, progressive 

 evolution takes place within the mamma. This unfolding 

 process at length culminates in exaggerated tissue-metamor- 

 phosis, which in other organs we should scarcely hesitate to 

 call pathological. In fact, Virchow and his followers all main- 

 tain that the secretion of milk is the direct result of a fatty 

 degeneration of mammary epithelium, and similar in all essential 

 respects to the processes involved in the elaboration of the seba- 

 ceous material from the cutaneous glands of that name. Bill- 

 roth, indeed, calls the mammae cutaneous fat-glands (Hautfett- 

 drusen\ and he does this in consideration of the mode of their 

 development, and because they are placed immediately be- 

 neath the integument. In spite of these statements, however, 

 we must maintain that the mammae are radically different from 

 ordinary sebaceous glands, and that the processes of secretion 

 in the two sets of glands are quite distinct. The grounds on 

 which we base this opinion will be amplified farther on. The 

 secretory activity of the gland, consisting in the elaboration 

 of milk, is, as a rule, called into play only during the period 



