908 | General Notes. [September, 
tively. With tannic acid, mercuric chloride, iodine, platinum 
chloride, and lead acetate it gave no albumin reaction whatever. 
The only reagent that affected it was absolute alcohol. When 
the pepsin solution was added to five or six times its volume of 
alcohol a slight white precipitate occurred. This, when burnt on 
platinum foil, gave the well-known odor of burning nitrogenous 
matter. The author concludes, that while pepsin is a nitrogenous 
body, it is not albuminous. 
CONTRIBUTION TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF BILE CAPILLARIES !.— 
Miura has discovered a modification of the gold method by 
which the bile capillaries can be stained, giving a simpler means for 
their study than the method of artificial injection usually em- 
ployed. Pieces of liver kept in Miiller’s liquid’ for two to five 
days are washed in water for several hours, and then transferred 
to a fifteen per cent solution of glucose for 2-3 hours. They are 
then placed in a 0.1 to 0.2 per cent solution of the double chlo- 
ride of gold and sodium for two or three days, and again placed 
in the glucose solution and allowed to reduce for two or three 
ys. Sections are cut by means of a freezing microtome. 
Miura has endeavored to settle two questions by this method, 
1. Do the Kupffer vacuoles really exist in the liver cells as the 
beginning of the bile capillaries? His method gives no indica-, 
tion at all of these vacuoles, and he infers that, as usually found, 
they are artificial products caused by the pressure used in injec- 
tion. 2. Have the bile capillaries walls? When their sections 
were traced out he quite frequently found places in which the 
broken ends of the capillaries projected beyond the cells, or where 
they formed a bridge passing between two cells at a point where 
they had been separated by the tracing needle. He concludes 
from these appearances that the capillaries have walls of their own. 
~ Tae Microscopic APPEARANCE OF STRIPED MuscLeE DURING 
Contraction *— The author investigated the muscle when thrown 
into maximal tetanus, and when the tetanus was not maxima 
The muscle was stimulated by induction shocks and killed dur- 
ing contraction by osmic acid or alcohol. 
The muscle of maximal tetanus when thus treated showed cer- 
tain bands (contraction bands) running across the fibers, repre- 
senting, doubtless, Krause’s membrane of the resting muscle. 
Between these contraction bands the fiber was swollen out, giving 
a convex border. Examined by polarized light, the whole sub- 
stance of the fiber is found to be doubly refracting. The contrac- 
tion band representing Krause’s membrane undergoes no change 
ce during contraction; it appears, in the author’s opinion, to play the 
_ Passive part of giving a fixed support from the shortening. The 
portions in between the contraction bands, also doubly refracting, 
--1Virchow’s Archiv., 99-512. Dr. Miura. 
*Du Bois Reymond ea 1885. S. 150. Dr. Nickolaides. 
