STRUCTURE OF THE LOBULES OF THE LIVER. 11 



own diameter apart, and further imagine these to be united by isolated 

 short transverse rods, it will be obvious that, if we suppose all the 

 intervening spaces of this trellis-work to be occupied with any kind of 

 material, this can never assume the form of a second trabecular frame- 

 work interweaving with the former, but only that of a continuous mass 

 perforated by anastomosing canals. 



I * have demonstrated, and my statements have been corroborated 

 by the independent observations of Eberth,f in Birds, Fishes, and 

 Amphibia, that two networks do really interpenetrate each other. In 

 the liver of snakes, for example, the hepatic cells are arranged simi- 

 larly to the epithelial cells of a tubular gland. (See fig. 119.) It is 

 here seen that when the section exhibits the circular section of such 

 an hepatic-cell tube, the cells appear, to the number of five or six, 

 surrounding a small round central space, having a diameter equal to 

 that of the biliary ducts. Both the capillaries and the gland tubes 

 form plexuses with small round meshes, and whilst each mesh of the 

 capillary plexus includes the section of an hepatic tube, each mesh of 

 the plexus of hepatic tubes includes the section of a capillary. Ac- 

 cording to v. Biesiadecki,! the liver of Man is constructed on a similar 

 plan, the hepatic trabeculae exhibiting, when transversely divided, five 

 or more cells surrounding the lumen or cavity of the passage which 

 represents the biliary canal. I have not myself seen anything of this 

 kind even in the liver of the new-born child, which, as contrasted 

 with the liver of adults, does exhibit some similarity in structure to 

 that of Amphibia as, for example, to the Frog inasmuch as it fre- 

 quently presents three or four cells enclosed in the rounded meshes of 

 a capillary plexus, whilst they themselves again form the parietes of 

 a minute biliary canal. 



According to the views of some few other observers, the cells of the 

 liver in Man are arranged serially within a structureless membrana pro- 

 pria, forming the so-called hepatic tubules, which are united into a plexus 

 by anastomosing branches. In these tubes a few scattered nuclei, having 

 a diameter of 1-400 of a millimeter, may, according to E. Wagner, 



* Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, vom. llth 

 May, 1866. 



t Medicin. Centralblatt, vom. Dec., 1866 ; and Virchow's Archiv, 1867, 

 Band xxxix., p. 70. 



I Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, vom. April 

 4, 1867. 



Wagner's Archiv der Heilkunde, 1860, Jahrgang i., p. 251, in which 

 essay the whole literature of the subject is given. 



