THE ALIMENTARY TRACT 219 
had enteritis high in the tract, one had uratic calculi in 
the cloaca, and three had trouble in the egg laying 
apparatus : one too large an egg, one a broken egg and 
one a salpingitis. 
Diverticula. 
It is almost certain that in a human pathological 
service of fifty-five hundred autopsies, one or more 
diverticula of the Meckel variety would be encountered 
and perhaps several of other kinds. In our material 
only pouchings or false diverticula of the colonic wall 
are recorded, and our personnel has often spoken of 
the absence of these gross abnormalities of the alimentary 
tract. The two cases, notes of which are given, are 
instances of hernial pouchings of the colonic mucosa and 
serosa, a condition which is well known in human medi- 
cine. It may be said to occur in two varities, one in which 
the pouchings have heavy walls formed by a thickened 
mucosa, muscularis and peritoneum and one" in which the 
bulgings have delicate walls, then being small herniae of 
the inner coats through rifts in the outer. Such a division 
is probably unnecessary or misleading since the latter 
may be only a forerunner of the former. However the 
clinical evidence of the simple variety is scanty and may be 
little more than constipation while the peritonitic variety 
gives a clinical picture of pain, constipation and a mass in 
the left abdominal area, then known as diverticulitis or 
pericolitis sinistra. In these cases the colon is much dis- 
torted by the irregularity of its mucosa and by inflamma- 
tory thickening of the muscularis and serosa. Diverticula 
arise from defects of the muscular coat, or second- 
arily after inflammation or prolonged constipation, by 
weakness of muscle, or as hernial protrusions around the 
entrance of blood vessels where the muscle is thin. Such 
sacculations permit feces to collect and continue the 
inflammation, thus further weakening the gut and pro- 
ducing constipation, the whole vicious cycle being favor- 
