The condition of the testes and prostate gland in eunuchoid persons / by Joseph Griffiths.

  • Griffiths, Joseph, 1863-1945.
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The condition of the testes and prostate gland in eunuchoid persons / by Joseph Griffiths. 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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    marked in a healthy testis, was a large, ovoid, compact mass of fat. Such an abnormal accumulation of fat has been present in all the specimens of like kind that I have seen. Curling notes a similar condition in undeveloped testes. To the naked eye a section of the testis shows a compact and fibrous structure which is not at first sight unlike that of the testis of a young boy; but, under the microscope, the seminal tubules are seen to be little more than solid rods of fibrous connective tissue, there being in the middle of each only a narrow fissure occupied by atrophied epithelial cells, or cell- debris (see fig. 3). The tunica propria of each tubule, thus altered, consists of two layers, an outer and an inner. The outer thin layer or tunic is composed of a single layer of flattened connective tissue cells with but little matrix; this layer being both in position and structure like the tunica propria of the natural tubule. The inner and thicker layer is composed of an almost transparent fibrous tissue with slightly^ fibrillated matrix and but few connective tissue cells; this occupies the place of and would seem, as in other cases of atrophy, to have been formed at the expense of the receding and dwindling epithelium. Here and there are a few tubules in which the centre is seen to be occupied by a number of large closely-packed polygonal cells with round nuclei containing small granules. In these, however, the transparent fibrous formation within the tunica propria is pronounced and like that in the tubules the epithelial cells of which are more nearly absent. These altered tubules are closely packed and bound together by fibrous connective tissue in which there are many spindle-shaped cells with a few large blood-vessels. In the corpus Highmorianum the tubules and channels of the rete are embedded in fibrous con- nective tissue as in the normal testis; but the ducts connecting the seminal tubules with the rete are more separate, and there- fore more obvious, than natural (see fig. 4). These connecting ducts are lined by a single layer of sub-columnar epithelial cells which are continuous with the cubical cells lining the channels of the rete on the one side and with the cells of the seminal tubules on the other. Here there are numerous large venous channels. The epididymis was naturally formed, and large in proportion
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