Volume 1

Elements of physiology : for the use of students, and with especial reference to the wants of practitioners / Tr. from the German, with additions by Robert Willis.

  • Wagner, Rudolph, 1805-1864.
Date:
1841-2
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of physiology : for the use of students, and with especial reference to the wants of practitioners / Tr. from the German, with additions by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    16/244 (page 6)
    these corpuscles, others of a different natui'e are occasionally, but not invariably met with in the semen of the higher vertebrata. These are minute shining globules, having dark edges, refracting the light powerfully, and bearing the strongest resemblance to small fat or oil-globules, (fig. VI. B, a and b, from the testis, p. 26). Occasionally, too, we find molecules of still smaller dimensions, which exhibit the Brownian molecular motion; it is still doubtful whether these are proper and especial corpuscles, or—and this is more probable—detached portions of the other co-existent lai-ger bodies. As accidental, yet very general and abundant elements of the spermatic fluid must be reckoned the detached epithelium cells, which we must be careful not to confound with the proper seminal granules. Sometimes considerable shreds of epithelium, with the cells tessellated, are observed. § 5. The SEMINAL, ANIMALCULES or SPERMATOZOA, by reasoii of their singular variety of forms, their vital peculiarities and mode of development, are, of all the elements of the spennatic fluid, those which naturally attract the attention of the obsei-ver first and all animals, sometimes very scantily mingled, at other times in great quan- tities—a fact easily verified, by examining the semen of birds of the same species, of the chaffinch, fringilla Calebs, for example, at different times. It has very certainly appeared to me, however, that in regard to quantity, the granula seminis stand in direct pi-oportion to the energy of the seminal secretion; they are thus infinitely more abundant in birds at the period of the greatest turge- scence of the testis, and repletion of the vas deferens, than at any other season. The dimensions of these granules vary considerably in the same animal. The measurements given above are the mean; but granules also occur commonly enough of the suoth, the jiath, more rarely of the jjgth of a line in diameter, and down to J,„th and gigth of a line. The bodies mentioned as bearing so strong a resemblance to oil or fat- globules, I have occasionally met with in the fully formed spermatic fluid of the vas deferens of animals of every class. They occur more rarely in man, and in him much more sparingly in the semen of the vas deferens than in that of the tubuh of the testis itself. The globules vary in their dimensions, but, in gene- ral, they are smaller, less definite in their outline, never granulated or punctuated on their surface (so that they are not aggregates of any finer molecides), and, with a little practice in the use of the microscope, readily to be distinguished from the granula seminis. Globules of the kind now under consideration, and of the j^nth of a line in diameter, I have repeatedly, hxit not invariably detected in the seminal fluid of the hedgehog, for example, of the bat and other animals. Now and then these very minute globules were observed to flit rai)idly across the field, in vii'tue of a faculty of motion api)arent]y inherent in themselves, of a I)u\ver certainly not referable to simple molecular motion. Are they monads? o\ a of the spermatozoa ?