Volume 1

The microscopic anatomy of the human body, in health and disease. Illustrated with numerous drawings in colour / By Arthur Hill Hassall, M.B.

  • Hassall, Arthur Hill, 1817-1894.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The microscopic anatomy of the human body, in health and disease. Illustrated with numerous drawings in colour / By Arthur Hill Hassall, M.B. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    itself, I am unable to say, not having myself detected them in either of the above situations. These bodies, which arc almost peculiar to the human subject, are stated not to occur in the pineal gland, until after the age of seven years. In addition to the above described essential elements of every fully formed human pineal gland, I encountered on one occasion two large round cells or bodies containing dark nuclei of a compound character; these appeared to be some modification of the sabulous bodies already described. The pineal gland is copiously supplied with blood vessels, is traversed sparingly with delicate nerve tubules, and con- tains a small quantity of an exceedingly slender form of fibrous tissue, which possibly proceeds from the caudate cells already noticed. The Pia Mater. The pia mater, the vascular membrane of the brain, is composed of fibrous tissue and blood-vessels; over the surface of the brain and its convolutions, this membrane is delicate and highly vascular, while over the spinal marrow, it is thicker and less freely supplied with vessels. In the ventricles, this membrane forms the choroid plexuses and velum interpositum ; in the fonner, it is thrown up into numerous processes or villi, each of which is tarnished with a large looped blood-vessel, and its outer surface, like the villi of the intestines, is clad with a very evident epithelium. (Plate LXIX. fig. 9.) This epithelium, according to many observers, is of the ciliated kind; the cells composing it, are polygonal, some- what flattened, and as Ilenle* long since noticed, furnished at their angles with spinous processes; these are only to be seen in perfectly fresh subjects, and it is probable that in some cases, they have been mistaken for cilia; not, however, since the fact has been attested by several witnesses, that I Anat. Gen. t. i. p. 233.