Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen.
- John Hunter
- Date:
- 1840
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.
67/494 page 59
![se ; : ay PRR Be e° a GLANDS CALLED VESICULZ SEMINALES. . oe It may, however, be answered to this that the contents of the vesicule are generally found in a putrid state, and have by that means undergone a change in their sensible properties. But the objection is readily obviated by comparing this fluid with that in the vasa deferentia as it comes from the testicles of the same dead body, between which there appears to be no resemblance. To be still more certain of the nature of what these vesiculs: con- tain than was possible from the examination of bodies which had been dead some time, I took an opportunity of opening a man, im- mediately after his death, who had been killed by a cannon-ball. The fluid in the vesiculee was of a lighter colour than has usually been found in men who have been dead a considerable time; but it was not by any means like the semen either in colour or smell. In another man who died instantaneously, in consequence of falling from a considerable height, whose body I inspected soon after the accident, the contents of the vesicules were of a lightish whey colour, having nothing of the smell of semen, and in so fluid a state as to run out on cutting into them. | | i have likewise examined with attention a mucus which some men discharge upon straining hard while at stool, or after throwing out the last drops of urine, an action which requires a considerable exertion of the parts. This discharge is generally called a seminal weakness, and is I believe commonly supposed to be the semen ;* but in all cases of this kind in which I have been consulted it nearly resembled the contents of the vesiculz in the dead body, though perhaps not quite of so deep a colour. I endeavoured in vain to persuade a gentleman who had this complaint that the discharge was not seminal, till by examining his own semen and comparing it with that mucus he was convinced of the difference. This gentleman had the power of emitting the semen in the same quan- tity as usual immediately after the mucus had been discharged, which is a further proof that this fluid is not semen.} _ Inthis country eunuchs seldom come under our examination; but we have sometimes opportunities of opening the bodies of those who have, in consequence of disease or accident, lost one or both testicles; and several subjects of this kind I have inspected after death. Persons who have had one testicle taken away will better illustrate the point in dispute than those who have been deprived of both. For it is to be presumed that such men have afterwards had connexion with women, and consequently had the action of emis- sion, which must have emptied the vesicula of the castrated side, if this had contained semen; and, as it could not be replenished, it should have been found empty after death. We have also in such cases an opportunity of making comparative observations between * Vide Treatise on the Venereal Disease, edit. 1st and 2d, p. 197. [vol. ii., p. 167 of the present edition. ] Weare + The discharge was truly supposed to be the contents of the vesicule ; and, it being imagined that these contained semen, according to this reasoning the discharge must be seminal,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33292292_0067.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
