A CONTRIBUTION ON THE MOTOR NERVE-ENDINGS 



AND ON THE NERVE-ENDINGS IN THE 



MUSCLE-SPINDLES. 



By G. Carl Huber, 



Assistant Professor of Histology and Embryology, 

 AND 



Mrs. Lydia M. A. DeWitt, 



Late Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy, in the Medical Department of the 

 University of Michigan. 



By far the greater number of all the communications deal- 

 ing with the ending of nerves in muscle tissues pertain to obser- 

 vations made on muscle tissue impregnated with one or the other 

 of the several gold chloride methods; valuable as such observa- 

 tions have been, they yet leave many of the details more or 

 less unsatisfactorily answered. Since the introduction of the 

 chrome-silver and methylene blue methods, some further facts, 

 tending to clear up some disputed points, have been gathered. 



At the outstart however — and without in the least attempt- 

 ing to throw discredit on the many important observations 

 which have been made with the Golgi method, greatly further- 

 ing our knowledge of the structure of the central and peri- 

 pheral nervous system — it may be stated that so far as pertains 

 to the relation of the ultimate endings of the nerve fibers to the 

 structural elements of the several motor tissues, the Golgi 

 method does not seem so applicable as its rival, the methylene 

 blue method. The great advantage which this latter method 

 has over both the gold chloride and the chrome-silver methods 

 lies in the fact that in the most successfully stained methylene 

 blue preparations, only the nerve fibers and their ultimate end- 

 ings are colored, while the other tissues remain practically un- 

 stained. The observations on the endings of nerves in motor 

 tissues made with the methylene blue method have revealed 



