On the Sensory Innervation of the Clitoris of Formosan Macaque

Abstract

The clitoris of Formosan macaque is very well supplied with sensory nerve fibres which form very multifarious terminations. Roughly, these can be classified into the branched and the corpuscular terminations.The branched terminations are of course uncapsulated and are formed in the whole gamut of very simple ones with only a few terminal fibres to the very complex plexus-like terminations. The simpler branched terminations are distributed beneath the epithelium of the whole area of the clitoris surface, while the more complex braenched terminations, especially those of the plexus type, are usually found beneath the epithelium of the basal portion of the plans clitoridis and beneath the epithelium common to the glans clitoridis and the preputium. These plexus-like terminations are nothing inferior to the corpuscular terminations in their size and number as well as the complexity of their architecture, so that they undoubtedly play a very important role in the sensory reception of the clitoris.The corpuscular terminations comprise glomerular terminations, PACINIan bodies and end bulbs. The glomerular terminations are found only subepithelially in the basal portion of the glans clitoridis and beneath the common epithelium, are capsulated, are of considerable size and are of complex construction. The PACINIan bodies consist in typical but small-sized bodies and those of a peculiar elongated type. The former are found outside the tunica albuginea, covering the corpus cavernosum clitoridis and the latter in the connective tissue in the deep part of the glans clitoridis. Rather frequently, several bodies of the elongated type are found densely packed together by connective tissue, forming a very large group of such bodies. The end bulbs are frequent in the deep part of the lamina propria of the glans clitoridis, especially in the tip part where it is swollen out crown-wise. These bulbs are of winding elongatad ellipsoid in form and are usually of branched type.In the inner plate of the preputium clitoridis, besides the common unbranched and simple branched terminations, a large number of our so-called corpuscular terminations Type I and Type II are found beneath the epithelium. The development of such terminations here, however, is far poorer than in the clitoris. Its outer plate contains a larger number of sensory fibres than the common haired skin. A part of these fibres end in unbranched and simple branched terminations in the papillae, but most of them end in fence-like terminations in the hair-follicle necks.