410 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



Kupffer has described delicate offshoots of the gall capillary pene- 

 trating the cell and terminating in swollen cavities occupied by oil 

 globules. I have tried to verify such a description as far as the 

 liver of the cat-fish is concerned, and although I have employed arti- 

 ficial injections of Berlin blue and natural injections of sodium 

 sulphindigodate, yet I have found nothing answering to Kupffer's 

 view. In the artificial injection which Kupffer employed it is quite 

 possible that lateral canals penetrating the hepatic cells with bulb- 

 ous terminations may have been due to mechanical causes. 



The hepatic cells are arranged in a definite way, and this arrange- 

 ment appears different according as the lobule is cut longitudinally 

 or transversely. When cut longitudinally the capillaries, when 

 they run parallel, are separated by cylinders usually of two rows 

 of cells, this cylinder being interrupted at every fifth or sixth 

 cell by a branch between the two capillaries. Between the two- 

 rows of cells will always be found a gall capillary. In this case 

 the resemblance to the tubular gland is very striking. It is also to 

 be noted that nuclei of the hepatic cells are situated nearest the 

 blood capillary. 



When the lobule is cut transversely, towards its centre there are 

 a number of capillaries also cut across and placed in the field of the 

 microscope at pretty definite positions. Around these capillaries the 

 hepatic cells are circularly arranged in such a way that the circles 

 are contiguous and that invariably two cells separate two neighbour- 

 ing capillaries. Here, again, the gall capillary is to be found be- 

 tween the two cells. When the section contains a number of capil- 

 laries cut regularly across, and at a position where they are joined 

 by cross branches, such a view as that given in Fig. 10, is obtained. 

 In this figure the resemblance to a gland tubule is complete. 



If the fresh isolated cell be carefully observed no trace of thicken- 

 ing or marking on the cell surface can be found ; when the gall 

 capillary was situated where the blood capillary cannot now be dis- 

 tinguished. This has special importance regarding the question of 

 the absence or of the independent existence of the gall capillary. 



Hering 1 maintained that the liver cells were a direct continuation 

 of the epithelium clothing the coarser gall ducts and that the liver cells 

 enclose between them the gall capillaries as intercellular passages. 



1 Sitzungberichte der Wiener Akad., Ad. LIV., and Arch, fur Mikr. Anat., Bd. III. 



