On the development of the great anterior veins in man and Mammalia : including an account of certain remnants of foetal structure found in the adult, a comparative view of those great veins in the different Mammalia, and an analysis of their occasional peculiarities in the human subject / by John Marshall ; communicated by Professor Sharpey.

  • Marshall, John, 1818-1891.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the development of the great anterior veins in man and Mammalia : including an account of certain remnants of foetal structure found in the adult, a comparative view of those great veins in the different Mammalia, and an analysis of their occasional peculiarities in the human subject / by John Marshall ; communicated by Professor Sharpey. 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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    I. DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT ANTERIOR VEINS. It has been shown by Rathke*, to whom we are chiefly indebted for our know- ledge of the development of the veins, that in Man and Mammalia, as in the Verte- brata generally, the blood of nearly all parts of the embryo is returned to the heart by two pairs of venous trunks, viz. an anterior and a posterior pair, placed symme- trically in the lateral halves of the body. Besides these, however, there is a median inferior venous trunk, which forms in succession the termination of the omphalo- mesenteric and umbilical veins, and finally becomes the vena cava inferior. Of the four lateral veins, the anterior pair, formed by branches from the head and neck, constitute the jugular veins. The posterior pair, which return the blood from the Wolffian bodies and the hinder part of the embryo, are called the cardinal veins. The cardinal and the jugular vein of each side join to form a short wide vessel, named the canal of Cuvier ; and again, the two canals of Cuvier (so named from their resemblance to the ductus Cuvieri in fishes) running downwards and forwards at the sides of the oesophagus, unite in front of that tube into a common trunk, which immediately enters the yet undivided auricular portion of the heart. In the subse- quent enlargement of the yet single auricle, this common trunk comes, as it were, to form part of that cavity, into which accordingly the two canals of Cuvier henceforth open separately, and thus represent two superior venae cavae, one on each side. When the Wolffian bodies disappear, the cardinal veins diminish in size, returning the blood from the hinder limbs and trunk of the embryo only. In the mean time the intercostal veins are formed and united together by vertical anastomoses on each side, so as to form the azygos and hemiazygos veins. Finally, in Man, the left cardinal vein becomes, according to Rathke, entirely obliterated, whilst the upper portion of the vein of the right side is probably concerned in the formation of the termination of the azygos vein. In the meantime a transverse connecting branch is developed across the lower part of the neck, between the two jugular veins. This transverse branch is rapidly enlarged, and then, in the human embryo, and also in those animals which have no permanent venous trunk on the left side, that portion of the original left jugular trunk which is situated lower down than the transverse branch, or nearer to the heart, and also the left canal of Cuvier which is continuous with it, shrink and disappear; the enlarging transverse branch across the neck forms the left innominate, vein; and the lower part of the right jugular with its canal of Cuvier, receiving the remains of the right cardinal vein, now the terminal part of the vena azygos, constitutes the vena cava superior as ordinarily met with: thus the metamorphosis is complete. In the Sheep, however, it was observed by Rathke, that the upper part of the left * Rathke, “ Ueber die friiheste Form und die Entwickelung des Venensystemes beim Schafe ” (Meckel’s Archiv fur. Anat. und Phys. 1830, p. 63); also, more particularly, “ Ueber den Bau und die Entwickelung des Venensystems der Wirbelthiere ”—(Dritter Bericht, iiber das Naturwissenschaftliche Seminar bei der Uni- versitat zu Kdnigsberg. Konigsberg, 1838).