RUYSCH AND DE LA SONE ON THE SPLEEN. Ill 



nerves ; and that if it were properly injected before it was dis- 

 sected, no other structure would be found. He stated, that the 

 minute ramifications of the blood-vessels appeared to have 

 acquired a peculiar quality, and were so soft and delicataf that 

 their texture was destroyed by the least friction ; and that by 

 the slightest degree of putrefaction they appeared to be reduced 

 to a fluid state. He also denied the existence of cells, or of the 

 whitish bodies described by Malpighi. 



The question thus at issue between these great masters of 

 their art was very carefully examined by M. De La Sone, a 

 French Physician, whose observations are published in the 

 Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences for 1754. After repeating 

 the processes of each of these anatomists, and instituting some 

 others in addition, he adopted the opinion that there was in the 

 texture of the spleen, a pulpy substance which was not a mere 

 coagulum, but which, however, could not be injected. 



He derived this opinion from this fact among others. After 

 macerating the spleen a considerable time, and injecting water 

 into the vessels until it returned colorless, he injected ink, and 

 confined it some time in the vessels by tying them : he then 

 allowed the ink to flow out of the vessels, and made various 

 sections of the spleen; but no ink appeared in the pulpy sub- 

 stance, although it was visible in small vessels which ramified in 

 that substance. He observed that this could not have been the 

 case, if the pulpy substance had been composed entirely of ves- 

 sels, as was supposed by Ruysch. 



He also examined the spleen after it had been injected with 

 wax, according to the manner of Ruysch, and believed not only 

 that the pulpy matter remained uninjected, but that Ruysch 

 himself, in his own preparation, removed this substance, suppos- 

 ing it to exist for the mere purpose of connecting the vessels to 

 each other. 



To see the blood-vessels in the same state of distention 

 in which they were during life, he tied the splenic vessels in a 

 living animal, and removed the spleen with the ligatures on 

 the vessels. In this situation he boiled it, and then examined 

 the appearance of the vessels and the pulpy substance. From 



