292 THE BLOODVESSELS, BY C. J. EBERTH. 



In the process of reparation of a wound there also originate 

 finer or coarser intercellular blood paths, destitute of definite 

 walls, which occupy the interspaces of the granulation cells. 

 Originally they form an intermediary plexus of plasmatic 

 canals which are supplied by the arteries, the blood issuing 

 through spaces in the unravelled vascular wall, and being 

 similarly discharged into the veins. A portion of these plas- 

 matic canals subsequently expand into true bloodvessels, the 

 walls of which are formed by the fusion of the cells lining 

 the blood canals ; the greater number, however, disappear 

 altogether.* 



Certain vascular plexuses are closely allied to the cavernous 

 tissues, and, indeed, not unfrequently, as in the case of the 

 papillae of the comb of the cock, develop into actual cavernous 

 spaces. Amongst these vascular plexuses there is one which 

 lies in front of the coccyx in man, and deserves special notice, 

 from the peculiarities of structure it presents, and to which 

 it owes the names it has received from its discoverer, 

 Luschka,f of coccygeal gland, and nervous gland. 



This plexus forms a round or slightly oval, pale red, compact 

 body, of at most 2' 5 millimeters in diameter, the surface of which 

 is either smooth or slightly tuberculated. Sometimes, instead 

 of this single body, there may be found from three to six poppy 

 or millet-seed sized masses, connected together by loose con- 

 nective tissue, and seated on fine branches of the middle sacral 

 artery. According to their discoverer, these bodies consist of 

 fibrillar connective tissue, with numerous oblong nuclei, con- 

 taining closed roundish vesicles, and simple or branched slightly 

 varicose tubes, which are composed of a delicate structureless 

 basement membrane, lined by an epithelium-like layer of 



* Thiersch, Artikel Wundheilung, " Reparation of Wounds," in Pitha's 

 and Billroth's Handbuch der Chirurgie, pp. 553 and 555. 



t Steissbeindriise oder Nervendriise des JZeckens, " Coccygeal Gland or 

 Nervous Gland of the Pelvis," Archivfiir Pathologische Anatomie und Physi- 

 ologic, Band xviii., p. 106, 1860. Der Hirnanhang und die Steissdriise des 

 Menschen, " The Pituitary Body and Coccygeal Gland of Man." Berlin, 

 1860. Anatomie des Menschlichens JSeckens, " Anatomy of the Human 

 Pelvis." Tiihingen, 1864, p. 187. 



