The great omentum : notes on its development, anatomy, physiology, and pathology / by W. McAdam Eccles.

  • Eccles, William McAdam, 1867-1946.
Date:
[1895?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The great omentum : notes on its development, anatomy, physiology, and pathology / by W. McAdam Eccles. 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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    alimentary tract and its supporting fold. In some of the earliest sections of the human embryo the intestine will be found to be a simple straight tube lying in the median line, and connected to the dorsal parietes by a simple continuous fold of peritoneum constituting the mesentery. Very soon, however, the elementary straight intestinal canal grows in length, and of necessity becomes convoluted, and at the same time differentiated into the several parts which it later presents. _ Such a simple, or at the most but slightly elaborated, con- dition persists throughout life in the amphibians, as for ex- ample the salamander, and even in higher vertebrates as the wombat. What is therefore observable in the human foetus is the adult condition found in certain animals. As the question under review here is that of the formation of the great omentum alone, it is unnecessary to enter into further and fuller details with regard to other parts of the peritoneum. The stomach, which was originally placed vertically and in the median line, as it becomes more and more enlarged has a great tendency to take a position which is oblique, or even horizontal, and at the same time to fall over to the right of the spine, thus bringing its left-hand surface to look ventralwards, and its right-hand surface dorsalwards. Now it is before the stomach has assumed this its final posi- tion that the first appearances of the great omentum will be seen, a fact which it is very important to remember. Divergence of opinion will here be met with, and is probably due to the great difiSculties which beset the way to an exact knowledge of the development of the gastro-colic omentum. Professor Cleland,^ in the year 1869, thus ex]Dresses himself : The stomach turns over on its right side and assumes its sub- sequent form, the mesogastrium grows still more redundantly, and forms the pendulous omentum, while the free edge of the gastro-hepatic omentum does not grow proportionately, but remains as the anterior limit of the foramen of Winslow. This extract is indefinite, and but little tends to put the early appearance of the omentum on a clear basis. Cruveilhier,^ in 1865, had advanced a more distinct state- ment, but I think a somewhat erroneous one. He says : La portion de ce m^sentere qui repond a 1^ dilatation stomacale, peut Stre ddsign^e sous le nom de mhogastre. Form^ de deux 1 Jour. Anat. and Phys., 1869, vol. iv. p. 198. - Anat. Descrip., 46 edit. torn. ii. p. 537.