Meyer, Revietv of Publications of Bethe and Nissl. 43 



to convince ourselves readily that the most differentiated sense- 

 organs, or the voluntary muscles, offer similar relations.' 



Everthing seems to indicate that there is a division of labor 

 in the nervous system in this sense, that the nutrition, meta- 

 bolism and the elimination of effete material in the gray mat- 

 ter and in the tracts of fibrils is attended to by the nerve-cells, 

 and also the task of accumulating the necessary energies for the 

 production of heavy work, so that enough vital power is ready 

 for the real nervous substance even in answer to the slightest 

 stimuli. This view of such a dualism is necessary to explain the 

 apparent contradiction between the intimate spacial relationship 

 between nervous substance and nerve-cells and on the other 

 hand the independence of the two morphological components of 

 the nervous system. 



This short sketch merely presents the general trend of argu- 

 ment of Nissl. His long and not lucid paper contains many 

 hints of things which must as yet be withheld from the world ; 

 many of the ' facts ' are obtainable only with Bethe's method 

 which is also withheld. Many expressions are given meanings 

 which seem to be the fountain-head of confusion ; I mention 

 only his use of the term 'cell.' Nissl's cell is a decidedly ex- 

 purgated affair, a sponge through the holes of which the ' real 

 nervous substance ' grows quite irrespective of the fact that the 

 fibrils and the expurgated cell-concept are together that which 

 we are accustomed to call cell for reasons too simple to be of- 

 fered to Dr. Nissl. The same holds for ' gray matter ' of which 

 nobody would ever think that it meant what Nissl wants it to 

 mean. Perhaps this terminology is necessary to produce the 

 degree of obscurity so popular for certain kinds of ' demonstra- 

 tions. ' 



The experiment of Bethe establishes physiologically the 

 correctness of the view of Nansen (see page 124 of my review 

 and plate 15, fig. i) of which both Bethe and Nissl seem igno- 

 rant ; and Nissl's ' gray matter ' is a realization of what Golgi 

 puts forth as the greatest obstacle to the neurone-theory, his 

 reseau nerveux diffus (my review, page 126) not mentioned with 

 one word by Nissl who seems in more than one way to make 



