THE LIVER. 



117 



brownish yellow colour; their chemical reaction are identical 

 with those of the colouring matter of the bile as it occurs in the 

 intestinal canal, inasmuch as they are not altered in colour by 

 nitric acid, nor dissolved by caustic alkalies. 



The hepatic cells are so arranged in the islets as to 

 form a network by the simple apposition of their flat surfaces, 

 without the assistance of any foreign connecting inter- 

 mediate substance or investing coat. The simple or branched 

 columns of hepatic cells, which are almost always to be found 

 among scraped off particles of the liver and to which Henle drew 

 attention (Allg. Anat., p. 903), are nothing but fragments of 

 the hepatic cell-network, whose elements do not cohere very 

 firmly. Taken altogether, the network of every hepatic islet 

 presents more rounded meshes at the periphery, while in 

 the centre they are constantly disposed radially, whence, in a 

 transverse section through the interlobular vein, long ramified 

 columns of hepatic cells are seen stretching from the latter on 

 all sides and uniting by short lateral anatomoses, so that the 

 intermediate meshes appear like narrow elongated clefts. The 



Fig. 221. 



w 



hepatic columns con- 

 sist of 1 — 3, more 

 rarely of 4 — 5 rows of 

 cells, have a diameter 

 of 0-01— 0-01 5 r// , on 

 the average, 0*006 

 — 0-02'" in extreme 

 cases, and are gene- 

 rally cylindrical or 

 prismatic, but not at 

 all regularly so; their 

 surfaces are arched, 

 plane, or, in some 

 localities, depressed, 

 and have rounded or sharp angles. The meshes of the hepatic 

 cell-network correspond with the diameters of the capillaries 

 and of the larger vessels which border upon the hepatic islet, 

 by which they are perfectly filled during life, and will be more 

 thoroughly considered below. 



Fig. 221. Hepatic cell network, b, and finest ductus interlobulares, a, of Man, 

 after nature, the union of the two, diagrammatic, x 350 ; c, vascular spaces. 



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