164 A REVIEW OF THE GOLGI METHOD. 



sections must be brought into one vessel, and can therefore only 

 be enumerated by groups, and not singly. By the method here 

 described this result can be attained with great ease. 



" ' C. In the other methods the sections must be very thin, 

 and are liable to be torn in the various manipulations (from the 

 microtome into the staining fluid, then to the slide, etc.). As the 

 sections are very thin, they must be also much more numerous 

 when a whole brain is sectioned ; hence greater expense, loss of 

 time, and more labour in making the preparations. In our method 

 the sections need not be thin, they are therefore less numerous and 

 exposed to fewer risks ; whence little danger of losing sections, 

 slight expense in the preparation, and greater rapidity in the 

 preparation of a whole brain. 



" * D, Finally, one must use in all other methods, dyes, com- 

 mercial and absolute alcohol, and clove oil or turpentine, while 

 we employ a little sublimate and creosote, which are very cheap 

 and inexpensive. In the other methods we must use cover slips, 

 because the high magnification which they require — and then one 

 does not see much — would not be applicable with the thick layers 

 of damar. We do not require this, and thereby escape not only 

 expense, but also the difficulty of avoiding bubbles of air under 

 large coverslips, whereby the preparation is often endangered.' 



" It appears to me, apart from all economy of material, time, 

 and labour, as well as the convenience of cutting pieces in the 

 microtome so to speak at odd moments without injury to them 

 from the long contact with water, that this method, which enables 

 us for the first time to follow in sections the course of nerve fibres 

 through the whole brain, shows an advance in the technique of 

 the study of the central nervous system, and takes precedence 

 over all others. 



" As I pass over the application for the macroscopical study of 

 the brain which Dr. Mondino has also made of this method, I 

 will here in conclusion again assert that the sublimate method 

 takes a high place among the microscopical methods for the study 

 of the nerve centres, alongside of the methods in which silver 

 nitrate plays the chief role." 



Additional technical notes in Golgi's method, " Das diffuse 

 nervose Netz der Centralorgane der Nervensystems. Seine physi- 



