24 



TATTY DEGENERATION 



connective tissue corpuscles of the innermost tunic of the vessels 

 as an example of the polygonal figures in which the granules 

 may congregate. In like manner the fibres of unstriped muscle 

 retain their primitive spindle shape after they are converted into 

 masses of fat-granules. 



The protoplasm of the fibres of striped muscle has a pecu- 

 liarly complex form, which is retained even after their fatty 

 degeneration. The doubly refracting sarcous elements {Boimnan), 

 which we regard as embedded in the protoplasm, constitute, m 

 their longitudinal order, the ^Waricose fibrillee" of authors; 

 and these are so disposed in the primitive fasciculus that their 

 nodal points and their constrictions respectively lie in the same 



Fig. 7. 



Fig. 



Connective-tissue corpuscles of 

 the tunica intima in a state 

 of fatty degeneration, -^hj- 



Fatty degeneration of fibres of 

 striped muscle, ■^. 



planes. Now, if we assume that the space which is necessarily 

 left vacant in this arrangement of the sarcous elements is occu- 

 pied by the viscid protoplasm, we must needs infer that the latter 

 forms a system of varicose threads with chamfered edges, 

 which are in contact with one another where they are thickest, 

 in those planes, therefore, in which the varicose fibrill^ are 

 thinnest. Larger accumulations of protoplasm exist only in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the nuclei, which displace the fibrill^ 

 at those points where they are embedded, producing thereby 

 fusiform spaces, which have to be filled in with protoplasm. It 

 is in these little conoidal appendages of the nuclei that the first 



