On the Wolffian bodies of the foetus, and their remains in the adult : including the development of the generative system / by William Mitchell Banks.

  • William Mitchell Banks
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the Wolffian bodies of the foetus, and their remains in the adult : including the development of the generative system / by William Mitchell Banks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    After the kidneys have attained some size, and pushed their way up from behind the Wolffian bodies, the vessels can be seen very clearly, running to the upper part of the latter in the stretched peritoneum. They are origin- ally branches of the posterior vertebral arteries; and it is this fact which gave rise to Baer's hypothesis (for it would seem to have been little more) as to the development of the Wolffian bodies (p. 7). As the organs diminish, so their vessels atrophy also, but their remains can be seen as delicate lines running in the peritoneum, till the embryo is 4 to 4J inches long. 3. The Genital Glands. When the embryo is about half an inch long, we see rising along the inner border of the Wolffian body, but plainly separate from it, a thin white streak, which is the beginning of the future ovary or testis (PI. I. fig. 2). Kolliker1 describes the appearance of a section made through the whole embryo at this period, in which the peritoneal covering of the Wolffian body was seen passing over these white streaks, and hence the .probability that they arise from some nuclear blastema deposited in the subperitoneal tissue, or what Kemak terms the mittel- platt. The genital gland increases very rapidly, changing from its streak-like form to a cylindrical, and finally to an oval one, and rising up on the concave inner surface of the Wolffian body, till it finally comes almost to lie upon it. At first the future ovary and testis are per- fectly alike in form and position, and continue indis- tinguishable for some time, but gradually the testicle assumes a rounder, broader shape, while the ovary is longer and narrower ; moreover, the former preserves the ] Kolliker's Entwickelungsgescliichte.
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