292 OX THE STRUCTURE OF THE MALPIGHIAN BODIES 



to Malpighi and Rudolphi, that they are sohd, but at the end he 

 qualifies this opinion : " I was long of opinion that the white bodies 

 are not hollow, but merely filled with a white pulpy substance, which 

 might indeed be pressed out of them, but was not distinctly defined 

 from the walls of the bodies. Further observations recently made, 

 however, have instructed me that the \\'hite granular substance which 

 is contained in the Malpighian bodies is too fluid, while on the other 

 hand their walls are too solid, not to oblige us to regard them as a 

 kind of vesicles with tolerabl)- thick walls. The «'hite clear fluid 

 (breiige) matter which they contain consists for the most part of 

 equal-sized corpuscles, which are about as large as the blood-corpus- 

 cles — not however flat, like these, but irregularly globular. These 

 corpuscles present exactly the same microscopic appearance, and are 

 of the same size, as the granules of which the red substance of the 

 spleen is composed." Pp. 88, 89. 



Although the Malpighian bodies have been the subject of frequent 

 and repeated investigations since 1834, I think that more has been 

 done to confuse than to improve the above (in its general outlines) 

 very accurate account of their structure. 



Giesker, in a work \\'hich I ha^-e not seen (Splenologie, 1835, cited 

 by both Henle and Kdlliker), appears to have been the first to diverge 

 from IMiiller's views. He states that there is a delicate membrane 

 investing the proper membranes of the Malpighian bodies in which 

 arterioles ramify — and thus the latter never enter the Malpighian 

 bodies at all (Henle, Allg. Anat. p. 1000) ; and Kolliker, Gerlach, and 

 Sanders (On the Structure of the Spleen, Annals of Anat. and Phys. 

 1850), agree with Giesker on the latter point. 



In the meanwhile, however, Gunsburg (Zur Kenntniss des Milz- 

 gewebes, Miill. Arch. 1850) had confirmed and extended Muller's ob- 

 servations with regard to the distribution of the vessels in the Mal- 

 pighian bodies. He says, p. 167, "Their framework is a vascular 

 plexus. The larger vessels [cylinder) are longitudinally striated, in 

 consequence of the regular arrangement of the nuclei upon their walls, 

 the smaller are simple tubes." These observations were made on 

 persons who died of cholera. 



In January, 185 i, Dr. Sanders read a paper, ' On the connexion 

 of the minute Arterial Twigs with the Malpighian Sacculi in the 

 Spleen,' before the Edinburgh Physiological Society, in which he 

 describes a peculiar method of preparation of the pig's spleen, \\'hereby 

 arterial twigs may be demonstrated " passing diametrically across the 

 area of the sacculi." " Stains of blood also, often in linear arrange- 

 ment, indicating capillaries, were seen in the interior of the sacculi." 



