The condition of the testes and prostate gland in eunuchoid persons / by Joseph Griffiths.

  • Griffiths, Joseph, 1863-1945.
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The condition of the testes and prostate gland in eunuchoid persons / by Joseph Griffiths. 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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    to the body of the testis. Under the microscope some lobules in the globus major appear natural, and the individual tubules, though small and contracted, are lined by a single layer of tall, ciliated, columnar cells, the lumen being small and empty. Whereas in other lobules they are much altered, the tubules being small and the epithelial-lining consisting only of a single layer of sub-columnar non-ciliated cells, and the muscular coat thin and in some places absent, being replaced by fibrous con- nective tissue which passes without any line of demarcation into the surrounding inter-tubular connective tissue. This inter-tubular connective tissue is large in amount, dense and fibrous, binding the altered tubules firmly together (see fig. 5). In none of the tubules can any spermatozoa be seen. The abnormal lobules much resemble lobules which have undergone the changes consequent on the inflammatory process. The prostate was small, tough, and fibrous. With the naked eye it could be seen that it contained some gland tubules, though they were few and scanty. The glandular tubules, as seen under the microscope, resemble the normal lobules, except that they are more en evidence, being few, and that the epithelial cells lining them are small and in two or three layers, the cells in a normal tubule being in a single layer and long and slender. The inter-tubular connective tissue was much more fibrous than natural, and the unstriped muscle-fibres were less developed. The VESICULJ5 SEMINALES were also small, being not larger than those of a young boy. I have examined a similar specimen (of testes) in the collec- tion of the Cambridge Pathological Museum, and found that they present the same structure as those I have described above. Other specimens, which are evidently of the same nature, may be seen in other museums. I may here add that this state of the testes and sexual organs is not unfrequently met with in idiots, as Curling points out. I have seen it only in one case, but the number of idiots examined by me was very small. This condition of the testes has hitherto been regarded as the result of simple arrest of growth, the organs retaining their pre-puberty structure. To the naked eye the body of the testis is indeed very like that of the testis of a boy both on the