548 THE SYMPATHETIC SYSTEM OF NEKVES, BY DR. S. MAYER. 



neurilemma. Sander has substituted for this explanation the 

 view that the spiral fibre is to be regarded as due to the fis- 

 sures and foldings of the inner sheath of the straight fibre. 

 These observers have been as unsuccessful as Kolliker in fol- 

 lowing the spiral fibre into a dark-edged nerve fibre. 



The spiral fibre, the existence of which was first ascertained 

 in the sympathetic cells of the frog, occurs also in the higher 

 Vertebrata; in the latter, however, the spiral coils are less dis- 

 tinctly marked, and the course of the two processes from the 

 same pole of the cell is more or less parallel. 



Since the discovery of the spiral fibre, some confusion has arisen 

 in the nomenclature of these cells, owing to the circumstance that 

 some authors, as Arnold and Guye, name those from one pole of 

 which two processes are given off, unipolar cells, whilst others, as 

 Beale, Kollmann, and Arnstein, term them bipolar. Courvoisier 

 proposes to name the point where the straight and the spiral fibre 

 are given off the holopole, twin pole, or simply the pole ; each 

 separate cell might then be considered to have a hemipole for its 

 origin. Cells with two fibres springing from the same point 

 !ourvoisier desires to be named geminipole cells. 



As regards the place of the origin of the processes, histologists 

 are divided into two sets, as has been already explained in 

 Chapter III. Some, as Arnold, Frantzel, Arnstein, and 

 Kollmann, and, to some extent, also Bidder, besides the older 

 authors, refer the origin of the fibres to the nucleus and the 

 nucleolus of the cells ; whilst others, as Kolliker and Schwalbe, 

 deny the existence of any intimate connection between the pro- 

 cesses and the nucleus and nucleolus ; Courvoisier admits that 

 though he has traced the straight fibre to the nucleus, he has 

 not seen it terminate either in it or in the nucleolus. 



In the very great number of cells that I have investigated 

 in reference to this point, especially amongst those that have 

 been taken from the sympathetic of Mammals, I have always 

 observed that the processes originate in a direct prolongation 

 of the cell substance into the process, and I have never per- 

 ceived any connection between the cell process and the nucleus 

 or nucleolus. We sometimes see, as Schwalbe has stated, that 

 the process breaks up into a divergent brush of filaments at the 



