HuBER, Sympathetic Nervous System. 105 



some doubt. The facts we possess, pointing to such fibers are 

 the following. In Ehrlich's (4) first publication, on the reaction 

 of methylen-blue on living nerve tissues, he describes a very 

 delicate network enclosing the cell bodies of some of the spinal 

 ganglion cells of the frog. The nature of this network could 

 however not be ascertained. Aronson {6"]), in a dissertation 

 which followed Ehrlich's paper, briefly mentions similar peri- 

 cellular networks, or baskets, found in the spinal ganglia of the 

 rabbit. Such peri-cellular baskets were then described by 

 Ramon y Cajal (68), seen (presumably) in the spinal ganglia 

 of the rat, as the figure he gives in his summary of the histo- 

 logical structure of the central nervous system was made from 

 a Golgi preparation of a young rat. Cajal here suggests that 

 these baskets may represent the endings of sympathetic nerve 

 fibers, which he was able to trace through the rami communi- 

 cantes into sympathetic ganglia. These sympathetic fibers, 

 divided in the spinal ganglia into two or three branches, which 

 could be traced into the substance of the ganglion, where he 

 suggests they may end in the peri-cellular baskets. 



Dogiel (69) in a recent publication on the structure of the 

 spinal ganglia of mammalia ( dogs, cats, rabbits and Guinea 

 pigs having been investigated ) gives the following description 

 of these structures, 



"It may now and then be seen, that through an anterior 

 branch of one of the spinal nerves a few small, meduUated, 

 sympathetic fibers enter a spinal ganglion. These at a node of 

 Ranvier give off one or two small meduUated or non-medullated 

 branches." 



These branches, meduUated and non-medullated, the 

 meduUated fibers soon losing their myelin, approach a spinal 

 ganglion cell, and, after making a few twists about its nerve- 

 process, break up into an extra-capsular plexus, from which 

 fibers proceed, which pierce the capsule to form a peri-cellular 

 basket. Dogiel is inclined to believe that the cell bodies 

 around which these sympathetic fibers form peri-cellular baskets 

 belong to peculiar neurons found in the spinal ganglia, and first 

 described by him. To these he has given the name, ^'spinal 



