The preputial or odoriferous glands of man / by Arthur Keith and Arthur Shillitoe.

  • Arthur Keith
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The preputial or odoriferous glands of man / by Arthur Keith and Arthur Shillitoe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    during the last 20 years ; they, however, had failed to find sebaceous glands in the prepuce as well as in the corona of the glans or the neck of the penis. They describe, however, a number of cysts in the neighbourhood of the frsenum preputii. Whence, then, comes the smegma which is found beneath the prepuce ? It certainly is not secreted by glands. Before discussing its origin it is necessary to turn to the develop- ment and nature of the prepuce. Bather more than two years ago Dr. D. Berry Hart published in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology an excellent paper dealing with the morphology of the human urino-genital tract. In that paper he set forth quite a new view of the development of the prepuce. Up to the time he published his paper everyone regarded the epithelium which joins the prepuce to the glans penis as having been buried there by the growth of the prepuce forwards over the glans. He, on the other hand, regarded the epithelium as a solid ingrowth, which starting from the neighbourhood of the meatus urinarius, shelled off, as it were, a layer of skin to form the prepuce. One of us accepted that view and gave it prominence in a text-book on embryology. But on investigating the matter we found that the old account is the correct one—namely, that the prepuce is formed as a fold that rises up and grows forward like a hood over the glans. As the prepuce grows forward three changes occur: (1) a new epithelium is formed on its deep surface, the lining cells arising from the epi- thelium covering the neck of the penis ; (2) deep ingrowths of epithelium take place during the last month of foetal life into the free margin of the prepuce which is thus thrown into folds (if this process is arrested phimosis is the result) ; and (3) that in the lateral aspects of the penis ridges of epithelium grow into the prepuce and give rise to folds. In cases of hypospadias in the male, and as a normal process in the female, these ingrowths are few in number and limited in extent. It is these ingrowths which give rise to the red lines seen in the preputial ocelli. The epithelium which covers the neck of the penis and lines the prepuce is of a peculiar nature. It is clearly allied in structure and nature to the epithelium which forms the sebaceous glands. When the cells desquamate they are transformed not as are the cells of the skin into a corneous substance but into a sub- stance closely allied to sebum—smegma. The skin of the penis of man is peculiar in being destitute of hairs. In that man differs from every other primate. This
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