CHAPTER XXVIII. 



THE MAMMARY GLANDS. 

 BY C. LANGER. 



THE glands destined for the secretion of milk, the tissues of 

 which for the most part only attain their complete develop- 

 ment, and their capacity for functional activity, after puberty, 

 present club-shaped gland vesicles, situated at the extremi- 

 ties of a ramified system of ducts. The fifteen or twenty 

 excretory ducts open separately on the nipple as fine tubules, 

 after they have previously formed in the region of the areola 

 dilatations, constituting milk receptacles, or reservoirs, the 

 sides of which project irregularly according to the number of 

 the branches they give off. A few of the latter pursue a re- 

 current course, in order to receive the secretion of the lobules 

 situated beneath the areola. Some of these glandular granules, 

 however, give off fine excretory ducts that run to the surface 

 of the areola, and open on the small projections of its surface, 

 thus appearing like small copies of the proper nipple (glanduloe 

 aberrantes of Montgomery). Anastomoses, if they occur at 

 all between the branches of two ducts, are very irregular, and 

 are met with only in the vicinity of the reservoirs. 



The entire mass of closely compressed terminal vesicles form 

 small lobules that, at the lower surface and borders of the gland, 

 hang in pairs from the extremities of each dichotomously 

 divided duct ; but near the centre of the gland, and beneath 

 the areola, constitute small isolated lobules that are not unfre- 

 quently seated immediately on the lateral wall of one of the 

 large ducts. These small lobules never coalesce to form larger 



