The Obstructive Prostate

The prostate lies at the neck of the bladder between the two sphincters surrounding the urethra from which it originates. The forty-odd ducts of this tubuloalveolar structure open onto the lateral and posterior walls of the urethra. The glands and ducts are embedded in an extensive framework of fibrous and smooth muscle, the whole enclosed in a common fibrous capsule penetrated by the ejaculatory ducts, which open on the verumontanum at about the middle of the prostatic urethra posteriorly. Normally, there is no lobulation. Le Duc's1careful study, by the injection of individual ducts with India ink and the demonstration of the distribution of each unit later after the specimen had been made translucent, disclose lateral and median portions only, no separate anterior or posterior lobes. The only function of the prostate is to aid in reproduction. It forms no internal secretion and its external one, as Huggins2