Observations on spasm of the canals for the food, bile, and urine / [Alexander Monro].

  • Monro, Alexander, 1773-1859.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on spasm of the canals for the food, bile, and urine / [Alexander Monro]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The muscular structure of the gall-bladder has been denied, because it is not obvious to our imperfect senses; but if the gall-bladder adapts itself, on all occasions, to its contents, and assists in expelling these, and also contracts, in a living animal, when mechanically irritated (which I have seen take place, for the space of half an hour, by which it somewhat resembled an hour¬ glass), and if it contracts upon a small gall-stone, as firmly as the bladder of urine, we might, with as much truth, deny the existence of the muscular coat of the bladder of urine, as that of the gall-bladder. In farther proof of the analogy between the structure of the gall-bladder and that of the bladder of urine, gall-stones within the gall-bladder give rise to a thickening of the muscular fibres of that organ, like stone within the bladder of urine. The remarkable arrangement of the muscular fibres of the bladder of urine has been very differently described by different writers upon anatomy,—a circumstance which induced me to investigate this department of anatomy with every care, not only in the sound, but also in the thickened bladder. After having made several laborious and minute dissections of the muscular fibres of the bladder of urine, I described at consi¬ derable detail, in my Elements of Anatomy, the remarkable dis¬ position of the muscular fibres of that organ, and as that book may not have fallen into the hands of all the readers of this paper, I shall transcribe a considerable portion of it. The Muscular Fibres of the bladder, in the healthy state, are flattened, of a pale colour, of a small size, and disposed in fasciculi, which cross each other in every possible direction, and completely surround the bladder. When the bladder is distended, and die muscular fasciculi are elongated, these fibres are much separated from each other; so that the internal coat of the bladder is seen between them ; but, when the bladder is empty, the muscular fasciculi of that organ approximate each other. These muscular fibres are not of an uniform size. Those which are external are the largest, and are disposed in a longitudinal direction. The smaller cross these.