Observations on some changes in form of the prostate and floor of the bladder / by Reginald Harrison.

  • Reginald Harrison
Date:
[1885]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on some changes in form of the prostate and floor of the bladder / by Reginald Harrison. 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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    but at the same time must be received with considerable reserve. Not less important than the changes which take place in the shape of the floor of the prostate consequent on its elevation, are those which are secondary to tliem; these, for the most part, involve the bladder itself. As I have used the word floor in respect to the prostatic urethra, I will continue to apply it to that portion of the bladder which is continuous with it, and which anatomically is spoken of as the trigone. That the upward growth of tlje floor of the prostate must necessarily leave a depression above, in which urine collects, is a fact which is generally recognised and acted upon in practice. That this should be so is not remarkable, when we consider the absence in any appreciable quantity of muscular fibre from this portion of the viscus. Nature abhors a vacuum or useless space. Amongst the conservative processes we may recognise in the body as the out- come of a diseased action is the hypertophy of the muscular fibres between the ureteral orifices, which takes place as secondary to the elevation of the prostate. The development of the iuter-ureteral bar is well shown in figs. C, D, E, F, G, H, and represents the lowest limit of the movable portion of the bladder. I have very little doubt tliat this form of muscular hypertrophy is for the purpose of doing away with the pouch above the prostate, and is a natural outcome of spontaneous efforts by the development of extraordinary agents of micturition to expel the urine from a part where it is apt to lodge and cause inconvenience. In several of the drawings, for instance G and H, the hypertrophy of the inter-ureteral bar, and its gradual approach to the prostate, thus tending to remove an inconvenient depression, may well be studied. But the development of the inter-ureteral bar by an excess in growth of its normal constituents, as appears from microscopic examination, though a conservative process, is not without its own inconvetiience, for it naturally leads to the production of a change in shape, similar in some respects to what it was destined to meet. In this way a considerable depression may be formed
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