ARTICLE THIRD.
PROPERTIES OF THE GLANDULAR SYSTEM.
I. Properties of Texture.
These properties are in general very inconsiderable in this system, which appears to me to be particularly owing to its non-fibrous texture. In fact, in order to be elongated and afterwards contracted and preserve their integrity, it is necessary that the particles of an organ should possess a certain degree of adhesion and cohesion; now, it is to the fibre that especially belongs this double attribute. Observe also that the glandular system is subjected to much less frequent causes of distension and contraction, than the systems with distinct fibres. It is scarcely ever found distended except when purulent deposits, serous, steatomatous collections, &c. are formed in its interior, as often happens in the middle of the liver, kidney, &c.; now in these cases it does not yield like the skin, the muscles, &c.; its particles are separated; it is the cellular texture with which they are surrounded that is uniformly dilated; the glandular texture is even soon destroyed. It is very evident when the collections are formed near the convexity of the glands; if the tumour be at all large the texture of the organ disappears; there remains only a cellular and membranous cyst. Hydatids so frequent on the exterior of the kidneys present us with examples of it. If it is in the middle of the gland that the cyst is formed, the destruction also takes place, but it is much less evident.
A strong proof of the small degree of extensibility of the glands, is what takes place in the liver in dead bodies. I have said above that it is more or less loaded with blood, according as the system with black blood had been more or less embarrassed in the last moments. Now whatever may be the quantity of blood it contains, its size remains nearly the same; only its texture is more or less compressed by the vessels, whilst on the contrary the greater or less size of the lungs, which is very apparent, always indicates its state of fulness or vacuity. It is probable even that it is this difference which has made all physicians neglect the infinitely various states of engorgement in which the liver may be found at death, whilst they have had a particular regard to the varieties of the lungs.
The veins of the kidneys, further from the heart, are less exposed than those of the liver to the reflux that takes place in the last moments in which the black blood is obstructed in the lungs. Yet it however takes place, and we see very great varieties in the quantity of blood in the great renal vessels, a quantity independent of that which is constantly found in the organ, and which, as I have said, is very considerable. Now the size of the kidney hardly corresponds to these varieties, because its extensibility is almost nothing.
As to the glands situated at the two extremities, as on the one hand the testicles, and on the other the salivary glands, we hardly observe in them the sanguineous stagnation, because the reflux is not sufficiently evident. We cannot then, in this way, judge but by analogy of their extensibility and contractility.
Yet the engorgements of the testicles, consequent upon gonorrhœa, and the various swellings of the parotid glands prove that these properties exist to a certain extent. Are the liver, the kidneys and other internal glands subject to those acute swellings that are often seen in the sub-cutaneous ones? It is very probable; perhaps even physicians have not paid sufficient regard to the accessory symptoms which may arise for a moment from the pressure of these swelled organs on the neighbouring parts. Besides, this swelling and the contraction that follows it, may take place especially in the cellular texture of the gland, and consequently suppose less extensibility of the glandular texture than they at first seem to.
II. Vital Properties. Properties of Animal Life.
The animal contractility is evidently nothing in the glandular texture. Does the sensibility of the same kind exist in it? The following facts are connected with this. 1st. A compression of the parotid is to a certain degree painful. I have even been obliged, in a particular case, to give up the method of compression that Desault had advised for a salivary fistula, on account of the pain the patient experienced; but the numerous nerves which traverse this gland may be the cause of these pains. 2d. We know that the instant the lithotome cuts the prostate, or the stone and forceps pass over it, the patient suffers very much. 3d. Stones lodged in the kidneys occasion horrible pains. 4th. Any considerable pressure of the testicle is very painful.
On the other hand we can cut the texture of the liver and the animal will give no signs of pain. Haller, after many experiments, ranked the glands among the insensible parts. What is to be concluded from this? That the animal sensibility, modified in a thousand ways, appears to exist in many organs in which certain agents cannot put it in action, and in which others develop it remarkably. We know that the various morbid alterations render it very evident in the glands. The inflammatory pain of these organs has even a peculiar character; it is obtuse and dull in the greatest number of cases. There is never experienced in them the acute sensation which characterises cellular inflammation, or the sharp and biting pain of which the skin is so often the seat.