Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 1.djvu/245

Rh escaped observation; and were it not for the change produced in it by disease, which sometimes enlarges it so much that it shuts up the urinary canal, it would, Mr. Home says, belittle deserving of at- tention.

It is well known that the prostate gland is, in the latter periods of life, liable to enlarge; in that case there is frequently a nipple- like projection, which forms tumours, of different sizes, in the cavity of the bladder. These tumours have engaged the attention of sur- geons from the time of Morgagni to the present day; but the pecu- liarities in the natural conformation of the gland which dispose it to form these tumours, have never been examined.

After stating the observations of Morgagni and of the late hIr. John Hunter upon the subject, Mr. Home says that his attention was di- rected to it by the examination of the prostate gland of an elderly person, who had died in consequence of this part having been dis- eased. The nipple-like process was very prominent, and a bridle nearly a quarter of an inch in breadth extended from the middle line of the tumour to the bulb of the urethra, where it insensibly dis- appeared. The usual rounded projection of the caput gallinagim's was not visible; and the space between the tumour in the bladder and the bulb of the urethra was unusually short; so that the bridle, which had evidently been formed by the membrane of the bladder adhering to that part of the prostate gland of which the tumour was composed, appeared to have drawn the bulb towards the tumour, and to have shortened the membranous part of the canal.

The above appearance of a bridle is more or less met with in all cases in which the nipple-like process occurs; but in so small a de- gree, that Mr. Home had not before been led to pay attention to it. He now thought it right to examine the prostate gland in its natural state, in order to ascertain whether any part of it is sufﬁciently de- tached to move independently of the rest of the gland ; and as his professional avocations did not allow him sufﬁcient time to make the requisite dissections, he committed that task to Mr. Brodie, demon- strator of anatomy to Mr. Wilson of Windmill-street. In conse- quence of Mr. Brodie’s accurate examination of the part, a small rounded substance was discovered in the space between the two pos- terior portions of the gland: this substance was so much detached, that it seemed a distinct gland; and it so nearly resembled Cowper’s gland in size and shape, that it appeared to be a gland of the same kind. It could not, however, be satisfactorily detached from the prostate gland, nor could any distinct duct be found leading from it into the bladder.

A similar examination of the part was made in ﬁve different subjects. The appearance was not exactly the same in any two of them; but our limits will not allow us to describe particularly the differences that were observed; we shall therefore only say, that the most distinct appearance of the part was found in a healthy subject of twenty-ﬁve years of age. In this subject the prominent body was imbedded, not only between the vasa deferentia and the bladder, but