THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM. 



243 



With respect to the rows of cells which are met with in ligaments of 

 the tendons, and in the tendinous sheaths, the nuclei of which, after the 

 disappearance of the cell, continue to grow and arrange themselves 

 together in the form of nuclear fibres, I cannot avoid remarking upon 

 their close resemblance to the more simple cartilage cells of the ten- 

 dinous sheaths and tendons, a resemblance so close, that I should almost 

 be inclined to indicate it as marking their identity, if it did not sound 

 altogether strange, to speak of a transition of the nuclei of cartilage cells 

 into nuclear fibres. If not as identical, still they may be regarded as 

 analogous formations ; and the rather so, because in almost every case 

 where cartilage cells occur in the connective tissue, rows of cells of this 

 kind, and their relation to elastic fibres may be shown to exist, as well 

 as in the interarticular cartilages, or ligamentous discs of Henle, as they 

 are termed, afterwards to be described. On the other hand, it is true, 

 similar rows of cells are to be found in the palmar fascia, tendons and 

 ligaments, although those structures possess no indubitable cartilage-cells. 



83. Vessels of the Muscles and their accessory Organs. A. Blood- 

 vessels. The ramifications of the larger vessels present little that is 

 peculiar. The trunks reach the muscles in an oblique or transverse 

 direction and then subdivide, running 

 in the perimysium internum, in an 

 arborescent manner, and at acute or 

 obtuse angles, so that every part of 

 the muscle is supplied by them. The 

 minutest arteries and veins usually a . 

 run parallel with the muscular fibres, 

 between which they constitute a vas- 

 cular plexus, so characteristic that, 

 once seen, it can never be mistaken. 

 The interstices of the plexus are rec- 

 tangular, with the longer sides parallel 

 to the longitudinal axis of the muscle, 

 and it is of course composed of two ^ 

 sets of vessels, one longitudinal, which, 

 as is shown most conclusively in trans- 

 verse sections of injected muscle, lie 

 in the fissures between two muscular 

 fasciculi, or in the irregular spaces 

 left between several of them, and the 

 other transverse, which -anastomosing 

 in various ways with the former, surround the muscular fibres. 



Fig. 101. 



Thus 



Fia. 101. Capillary vessels in muscle, magnified 350 diameters: a, artery; 6, vein; 

 c, capillary plexus. 



