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THE AORTA OF THE ELEPHANT. 
THE AORTA OF THE ELEPHANT: ITS NON -MUSCULARITY, 
AND THE INELASTIC NATURE OF THE CELLULAR COAT. 
Dr. Crisp, at the Physiological Society, exhibited the 
aorta of a large elephant, which he had recently dissected, 
with a sketch at the heart, of its natural size. The aortae of 
the zebra, tapir, capylarra, giraffe, Rocky-Mountain deer, 
lion, tiger, grisly bear, and Tasmanian wolf, were also shown, 
by way of contrast. The diameter of the vessel was four 
inches, including its walls; these were eight lines in width. 
The inner coats were too much decomposed to admit of a 
careful microscopic examination. The cellular coat was 
tough and inelastic , as in man, and in all the animals the 
author had examined. The middle coat (so called) presented 
to the eye a surface of an uniform character; no appearance 
of muscular fibers, as described by Hunter and others, were 
present, and, when examined under a power of forty dia- 
meters, no difference was observed in any of the fibres ; under 
a power of 250 diameters the yellow elastic tissue alone was 
seen, and no trace of muscular striae were visible. Dr. Crisp 
thought a better evidence of the non-muscularity of this and 
other large arteries was the physical test which he had 
pointed out several years ago. If portions of the so-called 
muscular coat of an artery are extended, they will be found to 
be highly elastic, but this property is not evident in inorganic 
muscular fibre. A question, however, of more practical 
importance was the non-elasticity of the cellular coat, which 
the author took the credit of being the first to demonstrate. 
Mr. Guthrie, in all his works, described this coat (the cellular) 
“ as especially elastic and retractile,” and the late Mr. B. 
Cooper, in his Surgical Lectures, ( Medical Gazette , 1849, p. 
881,) speaks of it as the “ cellular or elastic coat.” If experi- 
ments are made upon dead arteries, the non-e lasticity of that 
coat is readily shown, and it is owing to this property that 
the bleeding from torn arteries is chiefly arrested. The non- 
elastic cellular coat forms a funnel-shaped elongation, whilst 
the yellow coat of the artery, from its great amount of elas- 
ticity, retracts within it. — Lancet , 18 Feb. 1854. 
