770 
lacing nerve fibrillae, was positively disproved in the same year 
by W. Krause, Lupwie and FreischL [also Miura (3) 1884, and 
MartInoTti (4) 1889], and shown to be composed of nothing else 
than one of the forms of connective tissue in the organ, yet the same 
line of investigation has been followed up to 1888, by quite a number 
of histological investigators with approximately similar results, and it 
has remained for the silver method of GoLcı (and modifications of 
the same), to bring into full view the intrinsic nerve supply of the 
organ. 
It is impossible to deny that among the several observers, no 
one has seen true nerve fibres in the substance of the liver, but if: 
they have done so they have been so indistinguishably intermingled 
with fibres of another description, that they were inseparable from 
them, and have been passed by unnoticed. 
The chloride of gold method is notoriously uncertain in its results, 
not only in staining a tissue at different times in a great number of 
ways, but from the production of optical delusions, and the fact that 
none of the observers have found ganglionic enlargements of the nerve 
fibres in the inter-lobular regions — for such enlargements have been 
found in some portion of the sympathetic distribution in all the ab- 
dominal viscera, and are perhaps the best as well as the only absolute 
test of the presence of non-medullated nerve fibres — is conclusive 
of that all the investigators that have hitherto studied the subject, 
not found true nerves, or if they have seen them, have not been 
Vistinguish them from fibres of another (non-nervous) nature. 
question immediately arises what is the nature of the question- 
network, and what is its function? This can only be solved 
‚y a method of staining that clearly distinguishes between nerve and 
other fibres, and this we believe we have to a limited extent solved, 
as will be presently seen. 
Methods of staining. 
In this investigation we have followed chiefly the lines of the 
rapid GoLGı method, but as with the renal nerves, we found that the 
method as laid down by S. Ramon Y CAJAL and others, did not give 
the finest details with the frequency and certainty that is so highly 
desirable. For month after month in the course of other work, we 
stained portions of the livers of dogs and mice after this method, but 
without result so far as the nerves were concerned, section after 
section only showing a most beautiful tingeing of the biliary capil- 
laries, but not the faintest trace of nerve formation. As a last re- 
source we tried the liver of the rabbit and that of the human being, 
