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nective tissue; they must all consist of cells and intercellular 
substance, the first with any kind of form, the latter of any 
kind of consistency. The indefiniteness of the conceptions 
which must attach themselves to views so vague is too gene- 
rally known to need dwelling upon. They are no longer 
tenable ;—not more so than the whole cell theory itself. To 
begin with the reticular connective tissue, this does actually 
consist of stellate cells. Their nuclei are oval, their nume- 
rous and many times subdivided prolongations are connected 
with one another, while lymph circulates in the interstices. 
The structure here described recurs in all organs which can 
be regarded as belonging to the lymphatic system in a wide 
sense of the word. To this system belong especially the 
lymphatic follicles which I first described in 1860 as cha- 
racteristic structures of the human conjunctiva, Bruch 
having already observed them in animals. 
Now, fibrillated connective tissue, as, for instance, that of 
a tendon, consists of the very same nucleated cells [which in 
this situation should now be called inoblasts], only the pro- 
longations of the cells are longer, finer, and do not anasto- 
mose with one another. By extending themselves exclusively 
in two opposite directions, they produce, in virtue of their 
parallel and undulating course, the appearance of connective- 
tissue fibrils arranged in bundles. 
If a tendon be macerated in Miiller’s solution, or, accord- 
ing to the method proposed by myself,! in molybdate of am- 
monia, we obtain, beside fibres, a larger or smaller number 
of spindle-shaped elements. These are the connective-tissue 
nuclei of the earlier writers, the nuclei of the connective- 
tissue corpuscles according to later authorities, so called 
because they have a power of resistance to the action of dilute 
acids. Sometimes, as is well known, there is observed at 
the pointed ends of these spindle-shaped elements a fine 
thread-like prolongation. Closer investigation, however, 
shows that they pass into very long, delicate, undulating 
fibres, which are nothing else than the connective-tissue 
fibres of authors. We can accordingly distinguish in every 
inoblast its nucleated central portion (formerly called con- 
nective-tissue nucleus) and its prvlongations (connective- 
tissue fibres). ‘The somewhat thickened origin of the latter, 
at the termination of the spindle-shaped central mass, often 
still contains some protoplasmic granules. 
Sometimes only a single fibre is observed at each end. In 
other cases this fibre splits up into several, or the spindle- 
shaped corpuscle is itself already divided in its mass. Flat 
1 © Archiv fiir Anat. u. Physiol.,’ 1871, s. 11. 
