414 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. + [VoL. VI. 
observed in many cells. Material has been left in the weak potash or soda 
solutions for seven days with the same result. After treatment with the. - 
alkali, staining with eosin and toluidin blue will produce the same result 
in the nerve cell as staining unaltered sections with eosin alone, except 
that the nucleolus» will probably be quite blue. The nuclei of the 
neuroglia cells are still stained normally, as are also the nuclei of the 
cells of the walls of the blood vessels and of white blood corpuscles 
present in them, thus showing the stains are effective and would still 
bring out the granules if they were unaltered. Held has also observed 
that after treatment with alkalies the nuclei of the neuroglia and 
connective tissue cells are unaltered. 
If one treats cells altered in this way to determine the distribution 
of iron in the cell, one finds the nucleolus and oxyphile nuclear sub- 
stance may still be quite rich in iron but the remainder of the cell is 
devoid of it. The neuroglia cells also contain iron, this showing that 
the reaction would still detect any iron if it were present in the 
cytoplasm of the nerve cells. After prolonged treatment with the 
alkali, the distribution of phosphorus is quite normal, as the granules in 
the cell, the nucleolus and oxyphile nuclear substance still give the 
phosphorus reaction. 
One can obtain similar results if tissue is hardened in an alcoholic 
solution, containing a small percentage of alkali, such as Held employed, 
when the iron-holding substances of the nerve cell are extracted from the 
cytoplasm but the nuclei of the neuroglia cells are only slightly affected. 
A ten per cent. solution of lysol, which Reinke found to be a solvent of 
chromatin, was also used with the same result; it altered the staining 
properties of the nerve cell but did not affect those of the neuroglia 
cells. 
Ruzicka used material that had been fixed in sublimate for his experi- _ 
ments. The mercurial compound of these granules is much less easily _ 
altered than the granules coagulated in alcohol; but if treatment with 
the alkali be prolonged the same result is obtained. 
When the tissue is placed in the alkali it swells but shrinks again on 
placing it in alcohol. This swelling and shrinking causes clefts in the ~ 
protoplasm of some cells. Although these clefts do not correspond in 
position or form with the granules in the cell, it seems probable they are 
the vacuoles noticed by Held and Biihler and considered by them as the 
spaces left by the dissolved granules. It seems highly improbable that 
40 Held, Arch. f. Anat. u. Phys., Anat. Abth., 1897, p. 207. 
