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.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![and in them alone. The pain in the testicles, in consequence of being filled with semen and of the action being incomplete, is some- times so considerable as to make it necessary to produce an evacua- tion of the semen to relieve the patient. It may be observed, in support of this opinion, that these bags are as full of mucus in bodies much emaciated, where the person has died from a lingering disease, as in those of the strong and robust, whose death has been occasioned by violence or acute dis- eases ; and they are nearly as full in the old as in the young; which, most probably, would not be the case if they contained semen. These facts, taken from the human subject, are, I think, sufficient to establish the opinion which I have laid down; but, for the satisfac- tion of others, I shall give such facts and observations as have oc- curred in my dissection of different animals as tend to clear up the point in question. These vesiculse are not similar either in shape or contents in any two genera* of animals which I have dissected; and they differ more in size, according to the bulk of the animal, than any other parts whose uses in different animals are supposed to correspond; while the semen in most of those which I have examined may be said to be similar. The resemblance which obtains between these bags and the gall- bladder in the human subject by no means holds equally good when applied to other animals. In the horse they are like twof small urinary bladders, almost loose and pendulous, with a partial coat from the peritonaeum, under which there are two layers of muscular fibres; they are thicker in their coats at the fundus than any other part, and appear there to be glandular. Their openings into the urethra are very large, and although they open close to the vasa deferentia do not communicate with them. The septum between the two ducts is not continued on quite to the urethra, so that they cannot, in strict language, be said to enter that passage separately; but there is not length of common duct sufficient to admit of regur- gitation from the vasa deferentia into these bags. They are not of the same size in the gelding and in the stone-horse, being large in the last. Their contents in both are exactly similar, and nearly equal in quantity; but in no way resembling the semen emitted by the stone-horse in the coitus, or what is found in the vas deferens after death. In the boar these bags are extremely large, and divided into * [This term is here used in a more extended sense than in the present systems of natural history; but even as applied to the Linnaean genera the rule is affected by numerous exceptions of which a comparison of the vesiculae seminales of the ape with those of the human subject affords a striking example.] f [There is also in the horse a third vesicula seminalis, of a similar structure to the two lateral ones, between which it is situated, and having, like them, no com- munication with the vasa deferentia. This want of correspondence therefore between the number of the vesiculse and that of the testes affords another argu- ment against their having the relations to each other which exist between the gall-bladder and liver.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21131545_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
