Contributions to the physiology and pathology of the breast and its lymphatic glands / by Charles Creighton.

  • Charles Creighton
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the physiology and pathology of the breast and its lymphatic glands / by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    71/262 (page 55)
    That is no doubt an analogous • change under somewhat different circumstances. In the embryonic development there is hardly a tissue of the body but would show similar changes in its cells, as they pass from their indifferent nuclear form to their characteristic mature form. In the present case the increase in size is both very great and apparently very sudden, and the swollen cell-substance is occupied by yellow pigment. I have already mentioned that only one or two cells in an acinus at one time appear to be subject to the reviving secretory force, and that the large yellow cell often includes more than one nucleus. The pigmented cells are thrown off from the acini in large numbers; in the case from which Fig. 14 has been drawn, a large collection of them had been accidentally formed in the fat-tissue just outside the secreting structure. It is probable that they escape from the acini by passing through their walls, the still upfolded acini being not yet in free communication with the lumen of the ducts'. If that collection be examined with a higher power, it would be found that some of the cells have two nuclei, that the nuclei are all excentric and therefore clearly to be seen, and that a cell here and there has undergone the typical vacuolation, the fluid in its vacuole being of the same yellow colour as the granular cell-substance of the others. The pigmentation does not continue into the later stages of evolution, just as it did not commence till towards the end of involution. As the functional stimulus gets gradually stronger, the cells that are produced within the acini, whatever more epithelial form they may have attained to for a brief space on the acinus wall, are thrown off as somewhat large nuclear bodies of a granular appearance, which often acquire an elongated or spindle form in their passage through the interfascicular spaces.' The difference between them and the pigmented class of products, is that they have undergone a certain amount of functional transformation within the acini, as is shown by the presence of a sometimes o-ranular and sometimes fluid material in the acinous cavities; o 1 Aatley Cooper {Anatomy of tlie Breast), using the now obsolete names for glandular structures, says: In the fulness of lactation, those leaves [lobules] are full of cells [acini], which can be readily injected and demonstrated; but at other periods they do not admit of being filled, and a most minute injection may then be made of the lactiferous tubes, yet no cells [acini] appear.