PHYSIOLOGY OF PEPSIN-FORMING GLANDS. 
667 
When the muscular coat is removed from a fresh stomach and the mucous membrane 
pinned out with the muscularis mucosae uppermost, the glands do not as a rule show 
distinct granules, but present a ground-glass appearance. When the mucous mem¬ 
brane is thin and the light good, small granules of scarcely greater refractive power 
than the cell-substance in which they lie can be seen with Zeiss’ obj. D, oc. 2. The 
cells are not filled with obvious granules, as are the oesophageal gland-cells, but, on 
the other hand, they are not clear and transparent like the cells of the pyloric region. 
The small granules come out distinctly on teasing a portion of the mucous mem¬ 
brane in salt solution 4 ' (0'6 per cent.) or, better, in water. The small size of the granules 
and their slight refractive power make it difficult to observe the action of reagents on 
the individual granules. The reagents, however, mentioned above as dissolving the 
oesophageal gland granules—viz : bile, dilute acids, and alkalies—soon make the cells 
transparent, leaving in them little or no trace of the granules which previously 
crowded them. It would appear, then, that the granules of the oesophageal and 
oxyntic glands resemble one another in certain general characteristics. 
On treatment with neutral ammonium chromate (5 per cent.) the nuclei of the oxyntic gland-cells 
show a network like, but less distinct, than that described by KiEiNf in the similar cells of the Newt. 
The glands in the junction of the oesophagus and stomach .—The characteristic 
oesophageal and oxyntic glands j ust described are separated from one another by inter¬ 
mediate forms. The last two or three millimetres of the oesophagus and the first one 
or two millimetres of the stomach contain many transition-forms between the two. 
Partsch has mentioned that near the stomach the oesophageal glands lose their 
complex tubular form and pass into the simple tubular gastric glands. They do not, 
however, regularly and in succession become more and more simple ; there are many 
irregularities. Here and there may occur what is little more than a depression of the 
surface epithelium, or there may be a return to the complex gland. The mucous 
membrane in this intermediate region is thinner than that either above or below it. 
Swiecicki, from the examination of hardened specimens, described the oesophageal 
glands as stretching into the cardia. What we, in fact, see when the fresh mucous 
membrane is stretched out is that in the intermediate region the glands are fairly 
equally scattered throughout, and are not arranged in packets with intervening spaces 
as in the oesophagus, but that, nevertheless, the first part retains the characteristic 
oesophageal gland granules. When this intermediate region is treated with osmic 
acid, and subsequently with alcohol, we find that the first simple tubular glands which 
occur have rather large yellow-browm-stained oesophageal granules (cp. Plate 77, figs. 1, 
2, and 3), whilst farther backwards these granules begin to be replaced in some of the 
gland cells by the small brown-black-stained oxyntic-cell granules. We have, then, 
* Salt solution makes the glands at first more cloudy; then the cloudiness disappears and the granules 
become obvious. 
t Klein, Quar. Jour. Mic. Soc., vol. xviii. (new ser.), July, 1878, p. 315, et se(jj. 
4 R 2 
