90 Reviews and Records in Anatomy and Physiology. 
therein to seek the more or less definitely expressed formula of 
its structure—all of which will put us ina somewhat favorable 
position to regard critically some doctrines which are as remark- 
able as they are new. 
But first of all we will briefly refer to some of the more promi- 
nent researches which, from time to time have served as true 
finger-posts as each succeeding investigator and explorer has 
passed along the road. 
Although there can be but little doubt that some of those excel- 
lent old naturalists and observers of the last two hundred years, 
caught, with their rnde magnifying powers, not erroneous glimpses 
of the complex intimate structure of muscle, yet any definite ideas 
of its real compositfon as explanatory of its mode of action, cannot 
said to have been entertained until the days of the cell-doc- 
trines of Schwann and Schleiden. It is true that since the time 
of Leenwenhoek,. or even, perhaps, before, it has been known 
that voluutary muscle could be split up into fine threads; but 
this was the limit of their real knowledge, for, if we except Fon- 
tana, none of the observers appear to have had distinct ideas of 
the nature of these threads. 
alentin, from studies upon the development of this tissue, had 
perceived clearly the general character of its composition, an 
Schwann, a few years after, applied more or less completely and 
successfully his cell-doctrine to its elementary formation and con- 
stitution. ‘These undoubtedly were very important steps; but the 
contribution which marks an era in the histological history of this 
tissue is that of Mr. Bowman, which appeared in the Philosoph- 
ical Transactions of 1840. Rare are the examples in the whole 
domain of minute anatomy, where so much real progress has 
been made by a single set of researches, as in this case. In more 
than one particular, Mr. Bowman exhausted the subject, and it is 
perfectly correct to say that in the leading and essential features 
of the minute anatomy of voluntary muscle, the numerous micro- 
scopical observers have added but little if any thing during the 
thirteen years that have since elapsed. Bowman’s results are s0 
well known and even familiar to all anatomists that it is almost out 
of taste to repeat them; but I will state them in a brief form: 
A series of discs succeeding each other in a row and at re 
intervals ; a row of discs thus formed constitutes the primitive 
fibrilla, Numbers of such fibrille are bound together with an exact 
coaptation of their discs and intervening spaces—constituting the 
striated muscular fibre. ‘This fibre thus composed of a bundle of 
fibrille is encased in a special sheath, the sarcolemma. And, 
finally, a greater or less number of such encased fibres, bound 
together, constitute a fasciculus, and these fasciculi make up the 
gross muscle. We have then muscle: fasciculus, fibre, fibrilla, 
disc. Fibres may be split lengthwise, forming fibrillz, and cross- 
