164 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [June, 



In the low power view the capsules should be distin- 

 guished and then the at first confused mass of the cor- 

 tex should be studied and the winding tubules and oc- 

 casional circular " malpighian corpuscles " be distin- 

 guished. Then the tubular composition of the "mal- 

 pighian pyramids " should be made out. These parts 

 should be, all of them, accurately seen and located and 

 their relation to the gross organ realized before anything 

 more is done. I have italicized that word realized ; I 

 mean it literally. The reason that people do not have 

 more intelligent notions regarding the animal body is 

 because they do not realize the facts of cell structure, 

 these facts being mere verbal expressions, living only on 

 the pages of Quain's Anatomy, and not realities existing 

 in the animal body. As the realization of the coarser 

 histology, as shown by the low power, is completed, the 

 higher power should be used in various parts of the cor- 

 tical layer to demonstrate its detail. The beginner 

 should not expect to see all the points in his section at 

 a glance. Prolonged seach and careful, thoughtful at- 

 tention at different sittings are necessary to the full ex- 

 ploration of a section ; this is true of any organ and 

 especially of as difficult an organ as the kidney. Many 

 students expect a section to be as " clear as a figure in a 

 book;" they are doomed to disappointment. If they 

 stop here they are not of the stuff to make histologists 

 and may as well either drop histology or change their 

 expectations. A section, no matter how good it is, can- 

 not reveal itself to a first glance of even an expert and 

 much less to the first glance of a beginner. When I say 

 then that a certain structure can be seen, I mean by the 

 student who complies with these conditions. 



The cortex is composed of three different elements all 

 of which are more or less visible — they are the areolar 

 tissue, the vascular tissues and the tubules. Let us be- 

 gin witli the Inst, as these are the easiest to demonstrate. 



