29 



Dr. Emil Holmgren and the Liver Cell. 



By E. A. Schäfer, Edinburgh. 



In the Anatomischer Anzeiger, Bd. 21, p. 483 Dr. E. Holmgren, 

 referring to the so-called "ScHÄFERSche Präparate" of liver — a 

 phrase for which it appears to me "SiMPSONSche Präparate" might 

 appropriately be substituted — endeavours to explain the appearances 

 which these preparations exhibit by supposing them to be artefacts 

 resulting from an interstitial extravasation of the injection-material 

 between the liver cells and the vascular wall; which material has 

 thence forced its way into the cell protoplasm. His actual words are 

 as follows: "Gegen Browicz bin ich jedoch sehr im Zweifel, ob 

 wirklich hierbei natürliche Bildungen vorliegen. Meinerseits bin ich 

 vielmehr sehr geneigt, anzunehmen, daß Schäfer infolge einer ge- 

 waltsamen Injektion allerlei Kunstprodukte vor sich gehabt hat". And 

 in a more recent paper in this Journal (Bd. 22, p. 315, 316) he ex- 

 presses himself in somewhat similar terms. 



In support of this opinion Dr. Holmgren reproduces a drawing 

 from one of these preparations, which drawing according to him shows 

 such an extravasation lying in a space between the vascular wall and 

 the adjacent liver cells and communicating with varicose canals within 

 the cells (but not with the interior of the blood-vessel). Whilst I do 

 not deny that small extravasations are here and there to be found in 

 these preparations — they are indeed always readily produced in 

 making injections of liver — nor indeed did I omit to mention the 

 circumstance in my original description of the preparations, I have 

 nevertheless pointed out 1 ) and must here again insist upon the fact 

 that it is precisely in the neighbourhood of extravas- 

 ations that the injection of the intracellular canaliculi 

 fails or is incomplete while it is quite perfect in all other parts 

 of the preparation. In my opinion Dr. Holmgren has misinterpreted 

 the appearances which he has delineated. From a careful examination 

 of similar specimens I am convinced that the clear line which he has 

 described as the capillary wall and which shows no structure, is 

 nothing but a cleft produced by the shrinkage of the gelatine under 

 the action of the alcohol used for hardening and dehydrating the 

 specimen ; and that what he looks upon as extravascular extravasation 

 is a part of the mass which has adhered to the wall of the vessel 

 from which the more central part has shrunk away. Such appearances 

 are common in gelatine-injected preparations where, as in the liver, 

 the capillaries are prevented from following the shrinkage of the 



1) Anat. Anz., Bd. 21, p. 19. 



