Sulcal and Intrinsic Blood Vessels of Human Spinal Cord

The agreement which clinicians have recently reached regarding the diagnosis of vascular disturbances of the cord, especially of the anterior spinal artery, is paradoxically not reflected in their accounts of the vascular anatomic relations of the cord. The authors of popular textbooks of neuropathology1and those2of papers in which cases of disease of the anterior spinal artery are reported have differed almost to a man in their conception of the underlying anatomic structure. In this issue Suh and Alexander3give a comprehensive account of the surface vascular anatomic pattern of the spinal cord and an implication of the damage which may be expected in pathologic conditions of the several major vessels mentioned. The present paper concerns itself with the intrinsic vascular anatomic relations of the human spinal cord in an effort to introduce unity into the ideas concerned particularly with the branches of the so-called anterior