THE BILIARY CANALS OF THE LOBULES. 19 



this view, with the exception of the nuclei, describing the intralobular 

 ducts as a " capillary plexus " with proper walls, in relation to which 

 the plexus of blood capillaries was so disposed that it became " a 

 matter of accident whether the two systems of tubes were in contact 

 with one another, were interwoven, or altogether independent of each 

 other." Chrzonszczewsky, Frey, and Irminger also adopted this 

 view. On the other hand, according to Andrejevic,* the intralobular 

 passages in the Rabbit " are visible at the borders and their points 

 of junction at the angles of the hepatic cells," so that "their position 

 correspond exactly to that of the intercellular passages of vegetable 

 parenchyma." Eberth, indeed, corroborated my statement that the 

 biliary passages ran along the surfaces of the hepatic cells ; but he 

 explained the entire structure of the mammalian liver quite dif- 

 ferently from myself. According to him, in the incompletely injected 

 liver of Mammals, " the anastomosing trabeculae of the hepatic cells 

 exhibit ducts lying in their axes, intercommunicating with one another 

 without any, or with only incompletely filled, lateral branches." The 

 distance between the axial biliary passages coursing along the borders 

 of the cells of the trabeculae and the bloodvessels amounts to the 

 diameter of an hepatic cell, and the " lateral branches may either run 

 along the borders of several contiguous cells, or between the surfaces 

 of two opposed cells," and in part terminate by blind extremities. 

 He gives two illustrations corresponding to this description from the 

 liver of the Rabbit. To my idea, however, neither the description nor 

 the illustrations tally with the characters presented either by the liver 

 of Rabbits or of the Amphibia. I have only been able to discover some- 

 thing similar to it in the new-born child. I have never been able to 

 discover blind extremities to the biliary passages in the completely in- 

 jected hepatic lobules of the Rabbit. Biesiadecki describes the intra- 

 lobular biliary ducts of Man in the same terms as Eberth, except that 

 he considers that, as a general rule, they run in the axis of the hepatic 

 trabeculae, which, as already said, usually present, on transverse sec- 

 tion, five cells surrounding the biliary duct. 



In biliary passages injected with a mixture of gum and nitrate of 

 silver, Eberth saw a delicate doubly-contoured membrane, to which 

 he has given the name of membrana propria, a term usually employed 

 to designate a membrane investing the glandular epithelium exter- 

 nally, but not a cuticular formation, such, for example, as is exhibited 

 by the columnar epithelium of the intestinal canal. I have personally 



* Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akad. der Wissenschqften, for 1851, 

 Band xliii., Abtheil 1. 



c 2 



