52 LECTURE H. 



which have in part come down to us from the last cen- 

 tury, have exercised such a preponderating influence 

 upon that part of histology which is, in a pathologi- 

 cal point of view, the most important, that not even yet 

 has unanimity been arrived at, and you will therefore 

 be constrained, after you have inspected the prepara- 

 tions I shall lay before you, to come to your own con- 

 clusions as to how far that which I have to communicate 

 to you is founded upon real observation. 



If you read the ' Elementa Physiologise ' of Haller, you 

 will find, where the elements of the body are -treated of, 

 the most prominent position in the whole work assigned 

 to fibres, the very characteristic expression being there 

 made use of, that the fibre (fibra) is to the physiologist 

 what the line is to the geometrician. 



This conception was soon still further expanded, and the 

 doctrine that fibres serve as the groundwork of nearly, all 

 the parts of the body, and that the most various tissues 

 are reducible to fibres as their ultimate constituents, 

 was longest maintained in the case of the very tissue in 

 which, as it has turned out, the pathological difficulties 

 were the greatest in the so-called cellular tissue. 



In the course of the last ten years of the last century 

 there arose, however, a certain degree of reaction against 

 this fibre-theory, and in the school of natural philoso- 

 phers another element soon attained to honour, though 

 it had its origin in far more speculative views than the 

 former, namely, the globule. Whilst some still clung to 

 their fibres, others, as in more recent times Milne 

 Edwards, thought fit to go so far as to suppose the 

 fibres, in their turn, to be made up of globules ranged 

 in lines, This view was in part attributable to optical 

 illusions in microscopical observation. The objection- 

 able method which prevailed during the whole of the 

 last and a part of the present century of making obser- 



