Huber-DeWitt, Neiiro-tendinous End-organs. 175 



finger. He used Fischer's gold chloride method upon material 

 taken from the fingers of a girl of eleven years. The ending is 

 spindle-shaped and consists of bundles of white fibrous and yel- 

 low elastic connective tissue fibers surrounded by a capsule 

 largely of yellow elastic tissue. The author thus distinguishes 

 this spindle, which may bear his name, from the neuro-tendi- 

 nous end-organs of Golgi, 



(i) In the neuro-tendinous organ, the medullated fiber 

 runs a nearly straight course to the point where it becomes non- 

 medullated, while in the Ruffini spindle, the nerve makes long 

 and tortuous turns in the interior of the spindle before becom- 

 ing non-medullated. 



(2) In the neuro-tendinous organ, the non-medullated 

 nerve breaks up rapidly into short, ribbon-like branches in the 

 form of arborizations, while in the Ruffini organ, the divisions 

 are irregular and the branches long, tortuous and varicose. 



(3) The plaque-like distribution met in the neuro-tendinous 

 organ is never found in the author's spindle. 



(4) The Golgi organs, in transverse section, show a rather 

 regular arrangement of the turns of non-medullated fibers in 

 spiral or in ring around the small tendons of the organ, the in- 

 tertwining never completely occupying the cross section. In 

 the Ruffini organ, the twinings are very regular and occupy the 

 whole cross section, so that nearly all the serial sections show 

 about the same figure. 



(5) The Ruffini organ is composed of connective and elas- 

 tic tissue, while the Golgi organ consists of tendon fasciculi. 



We have given somewhat fully Ruffini's account of the 

 nerve end-organ found by him in the connective tissue of the 

 hand, since by doing so, we have been able to give, in an indi- 

 rect way, Ruffini's observations on the terminations of nerves 

 in the neuro-tendinous end-organs. 



In 1893, Smirnow published some observations on the ter- 

 minations of nerves in the frog and toad, having used a modifi- 

 cation of Ehrlich's intra-vitam methylen-blue method. He 

 finds, in the musculus sterno-radialis and musculus semi-tendino- 

 sus, special tendon nerves and nerve endings which extend to 



