ANTERIOR FEMORAL REGION. 227 



at the union of the middle and lower third of the thigh, 

 and which is the commencement of a fibrous canal, formed 

 by the tendons of the adductor magnus and vastus interims 

 muscles, called Hunter's canal ; the sartorius muscle, usu- 

 ally called the satellite of the femoral artery, crosses the 

 thigh at such constantly varying angles, that its precise 

 relation to it is by no means constant. The artery may 

 sometimes be found split into two trunks below the origin 

 of the profunda ; these, however, always unite before the 

 vessel perforates the adductor magnus. The point of elec- 

 tion for applying a ligature to the femoral artery, is, the 

 thigh being rotated outward, at the apex of Scarpa's trian- 

 gle, where the sartorius muscle crosses the vessel ; it cor- 

 responds to the bisection of a line drawn from the centre 

 of Foupart's ligament to the posterior edge of the inner 

 mdyle of the femur, b}^ a transverse line indicating the 

 >per fourth of the thigh. 



The superficial branches given off by the femoral artery 

 ive been already dissected and described, at p. 195, in 

 mnection with the anatomy of femoral hernia. 

 At a variable distance, viz : from one half to two inches 

 ilow Poupart's ligament, the femoral artery gives off', pos- 

 iriorly, a large branch, nearly equal in size to the main 

 trunk itself, and called the profunda artery. This, passing 

 backward behind the adductor longus, breaks into branches 

 which perforate the adductor muscles, and are distributed 

 to the parts on the back of the thigh. 



The dissection of the profunda is with difficulty accomplished, with- 

 out destroying parts yet to be dissected, owing to the number of its 

 branches, the confined limits of the space they occupy, and the depth 

 to which they penetrate. The scissors will be found useful at this 

 time, and, by the aid of hooks and by a judicious position of the limb, 

 the soft fat and cellular tissue surrounding the arteries may be re- 

 moved, and the branches, if not too much meddled with by the for- 

 ceps, neatly displayed. 



The profunda gives off an external and an internal cir- 

 cumflex artery,; one or both of these sometimes arise directly 

 from the femoral. 



The external circumflex is the larger of the two ; it passes outward 

 beneath the rectus muscle and divides into three branches, or sets of 

 branches, viz : ascending, to inosculate with the gluteal artery on the 

 dorsum of the ilium, near its crest ; middle, which curve around the 

 femur, just beneath the greater trochanter, toinosculate with the gluteal 

 and internal circumflex arteries ; and descending, which are distrib- 

 uted to the muscles of the outside of the thigh. 



