222 Anatomy Applied to Medicine and Smgery. 



part of the small intestine. The mesentery is peculiar in 

 that it forms a plane, one side of which the vertebral 

 is six inches in length, while the other the intestinal 

 has a length of twenty-three feet, although but eight 

 inches distant from the spine. It would almost seem as 

 though one border the vertebral had been "puckered" 

 up, until it was only six inches in length, but in reality, the 

 other border, i.e., the intestinal, has been elongated, since 

 this peculiar shape is due to the convolutions that have 

 developed in the primitive intestinal loop, which originally 

 lay in front of the posterior mesial line, and may, perhaps, 

 be better appreciated by imagining a spiral spring twenty- 

 three feet in length compressed to a bulk of about six 

 inches in length. Imagine, further, an incision made 

 through the posterior wall of the abdomen dividing all 

 the structures, with the exception of the peritoneum, and 

 extending from the left side of the second lumbar to the 

 right sacro-iliac symphysis. If this spring be compressed 

 to its minimum, i.e., six inches, and be inserted through 

 the posterior wound, pushing the peritoneum in front of 

 it, so as to stretch it to the distance of about eight inches 

 from the spine, and if the spring be loosened, we would 

 then have a spring, twenty-three feet in length, attached 

 by a mesentery, eight inches wide, to the vertebral wall 

 for a distance of six inches. Meckel's Diverticulum. In 

 about 2% of subjects there is a pouch or diverticulum 

 given off from the ileum near its lower end and generally 

 about three or three and a half feet from the ileo-csecal 

 valve. This pouch varies in length and may be a factor 

 in the production of intestinal obstruction. It is the re- 

 mains of the vitello-intestinal duct of the foetus. 



The Large Intestine differs from the small in its 

 shorter length, five feet; in its width, three inches at its 

 widest, to one inch at its narrowest part ; in its more fixed 



