GLAND, in anatomy, may be defined a circumscribed apparatus of the soft parts, whose office is to secern a certain juice, and throw it out of the immediate circulation.
The glands are roundish bodies, seated in the cellular membrane, generally near the large vessels; their
substance is firm, and of various colours. Sylvius was the first who divided the glands into conglomerate and conglomerate. Malpighi added what he calls the folliculus or simple gland; instances of which are the small glands behind the ears, but the most remarkable are those in the fauces.
Dr Nicholls divides the glands into sinuous, tubular, and equal. What he means by sinuous gland is, when each little gland hath its own excretory duct, through which it transmits its liquor to a common basin, as the kidneys; his tubular is the same as the conglomerate gland of Sylvius, of which the testes are an instance. By an equal gland he means where the vessels are branched, as in the liver.
Ruyfch proves by subtle injections, that the substance of the glands is vascular, consisting of a ramifying artery, partly terminating in a vein, and partly in an excretory duct.
Mr Hewson says, that the little corpora globosa, which most modern anatomists call cryptæ and folliculæ, are nothing but convoluted arteries.
The glands are often disordered by becoming large and indurated. When they are swelled and hard, they are said to be indurated; if they grow harder, they are said to be scirrhus; if, when hard, they become painful, they are incipient or occult cancers; if their hardness and pain continue long, they are called carcinomata, or inveterate occult cancers; and if the skin breaks, they are called ulcerated cancers.