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What does the word gland mean?

• A secreting organ. The secretion may be poured out upon the surface or into a cavity, or it may be at once taken into the blood without appearing externally; it may be of service to the economy, in digestion, as a lubricant, etc., or it may be purely excrementitious, removing waste and poisonous material from the body. For the glands not defined here, see under glandula.

• An organ secreting or excreting a substance.

• ( diminutive of glans, an acorn, a kernel.) Aden. The ancient anatomists gave this name to a number of organs of a texture generally soft, and a shape more or less globular, but differing greatly in their nature and functions. They applied it, for instance, 1. To those organs which separate from the blood, any fluid whatever. When such organs were composed of several lobules, united by common vessels, they received the name conglomerate glands, as the parotid, pancreas, &c. 2. To the reddish and spongy, knot-like bodies, which are met with in the course of the lymphatics. These they called conglobate glands; - see Ganglion, ( lymphatic;) and 3dly and lastly, to various other organs, whose intimate texture and functions are still unknown, as the Pineal gland, Pituitary gland, Glands of Pacchioni, Thyroid gland, Thymus gland, Supra-renal glands, &c. Chanssier restricts the word gland to those softish, granular, lobated organs, composed of vessels, and a particular texture, of which there are in the human body, the lachrymal, salivary, and mammary, the testicles, the liver, pancreas, and kidneys. These permanent glands, or glands with permanent ducts, are all destined to draw from the blood the molecules necessary for the formation of new fluids, and to convey these fluids externally, by means of one or more excretory ducts. Several glands, besides their excretory ducts, have especial reservoirs, in which the fluids, secreted by them, collect, remain for a greater or less space of time, and undergo slight modifications before being evacuated; - such are, the gallbladder for the liver, the urinary bladder for the kidneys, &c. Each gland has an organization peculiar to it, but we know not the intimate nature of the glandular texture. -Malpighi believed that the vessels terminate in small, solid masses, to which he gave the name-glandular grains or acini. In these, he considered, the excretory ducts originate. Ruysch thought that the glands are entirely vascular, and that the excretory ducts are immediately continuous with the vasa afferentia, &c. The best view, perhaps, is, that the exhaling or secreting vessel is distributed on the animal membrane, which forms the blind extremity of the excretory duct, and that the secretion is effected through it by means of cells. The term glande( F.) is sometimes appropriated to the tumour formed by inflammation or engorgement of a lymphatic ganglion.

• Glans-g. Accessory, of the Parotid, see Parotid-g. Anteprostatic, see Cowper'a glands-g. Blood, see Ganglion-g. Globate, Conglobate gland-g. Prostate, Prostate-g. Salivary, abdominal, Pancreas.

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