WHILE studying the problem of the pathogenesis of stricture of the common bile duct we noted the lack of knowledge of its arterial blood supply. None of the standard anatomy texts describe the blood supply, and the illustrations in the various atlases are either very diagrammatic or lacking. The only reference in the literature so far discovered is in the report of postmortem dissections of Shapiro and Robillard,1 who in the course of a study of the blood vasculature of the doudenum in 62 cases summarized the arterial supply from an undisclosed number of specimens. They found that the duct had a very poor supply of blood, consisting chiefly of end arteries and only an occasional anastomotic marginal artery. Injury to these small vessels, they said, might result in ischemic necrosis and stricture of the duct. This idea seemed to us to warrant further investigation. MATERIAL AND METHODS Fifty human postmortem