NATURE OF CONNECTION BETWEEN NEURONS 309 



or merely a felt-work in which the fine fibres intertwine among each other 

 without becoming actually continuous at any points, is difficult to make 

 out. On the periphery of the cell itself another network has been described 

 and is known as the Golgi network (Fig. 150). This has been displayed 

 both by the process of impregnation with silver chromate (Golgi method) 

 as well as by staining with methylene blue. Some authors have regarded 

 this network as an artefact due to precipitation of albuminous fluids on the 

 surface of the cell. According to Bethe, however, the Golgi network on the 

 one hand receives fibres from the encircling pericellular basket-work of axons, 



FIG. 149. Basket-work of,fibres 

 around two cells of Purkinje. 

 (CAJAL.) 



a, axis-cylinder or nerve-fibre 

 process of one of the corpuscles 

 of Purkinje; 6, fibres prolonged 

 over the beginning of the axis- 

 cylinder process ; c, branches of 

 the nerve-fibre processes of cells 

 of the molecular layer, felted 

 together around the bodies of 

 the corpuscles of Purkinje. 



FIG. 150. Superficial network of Golgi surrounding 

 two cells from the cerebral cortex of the cat ; Erlich's 

 method. (CAJAL.) 

 A, large cell ; B, small cell ; a, a, folds in the network ; 



6, a ring-like condensation of the network at the poles 



of the larger cell ; c, spinous projections from the 



surface. 



and on the other hand gives off towards the interior of the cell fine fibrils, 

 which are continuous with the neurofibrillae of the cell and pass out in its 

 axon. The diagrammatic course of a nerve impulse according to Bethe is 

 represented in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 151). An impulse starting 

 from the periphery of the body travels up the distal process of the posterior 

 root ganglion- cell, passes either through the cell or directly to the central 

 process, and travels along this to the terminations of the posterior root 

 fibres round a posterior horn-cell. Here it passes into the peri-cellular 

 basket-work or axon network, thence into the Golgi network and along 

 the fibrillse of the cell out by the fibrill* of the axon and so to a fresh synapse 

 with a cell of the anterior horn. 



There are certain physiological difficulties in the acceptance of this 



