154 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



In none of these sections do we find any extensive muli- 

 plication of what Bevan Lewis calls the lymph-connective ele- 

 ment. The pale corpuscles with flask-shaped faintly staining 

 bodies are no more numerous than in the healthy brain. Oc- 

 casionally the cell-body is shrunken, as a result of which the 

 processes, which are ori^nally very numerous, became more 

 conspicuous. Golgi staining and our haematoxylin process 

 seem to show that these cells are always supplied with an enor- 

 mous system of processes whose terminal brushes often collect 

 about blood vessels and other cells. 



We venture to quote somewhat at length from Bevan 

 Lewis respecting the lymph-connective elements or spider cells, 

 (scavenger cells.) 



"The cells which are usually called 'glia cells,' or what 

 we have, in our anatomical section, alluded to as tlte 'flask- 

 shaped elements' of the neuroglia, undergo a wondrous trans- 

 formation, the real significance of which does not appear to have 

 been hitherto appreciated. . . . These elements are 

 small flask-shaped cells with a comparatively large nucleus at 

 their greater extremity, which latter stains faintly with aniline- 

 black, whilst the protoplasm of the cell itself remains unstained, 

 and so delicate as to be recognized with difficulty in healthy 

 states. Each has a connection by a delicate process with a 

 neighboring blood vessel, and in frozen sections fresh examined, 

 exhibits several branches so fragile and so excessively delicate, 

 as to be seen only after a keen search, as they remain wholly 

 unstained by reagents. In the morbid change to which we now 

 allude, these flask-shaped cells enlarge very considerably into 

 great amoeboid masses of protoplasm, often exhibiting subdivi- 

 sion of the nucleus ; and, what is of great import, their proto- 

 plasm 7101V stams deeply with aniline, though not so intensely as 

 their nuclei. From this extraordinary cell of protean form 

 radiate on all sides numerous branching fibrils, forming an intri- 

 cate and delicate network around it as a centre, all of which 

 branches even to their most delicate subdivisions are readily 

 stained by the same reagent. These cells have been termed 

 Deiter's cells ; they are all characterized by the presence of a 



