1905.] Distribution of Chlorides in Nerve Cells and Fibres. 171 



marked kind. In such animals, however, after the nerves were cut and then 

 stimulated with induction currents for some minutes, striation was found in a 

 great number of axons. 



To show the striation the preparations must be perfectly fresh, as those 

 made some time after death reveal few striated fibres, although Jakimovitch 

 found them 24 hours after death in the spinal cord of man and of fishes, but 

 in this case striation was feebly pronounced, while they were absent in 

 an animal dead for six hours, in mice dead from inanition, in frogs slowly 

 poisoned with curare, and in the optic nerves of frogs kept functionally 

 inactive for 8 to 10 days by suturing the eyelids and covering them with a 

 layer of copal varnish. In prolonged chloroform anaesthesia the number of 

 fibres striated were few, as was the case with rabbit dead from paralytic 

 hydrophobia and in birds dead from intoxication. 



The striation, Jakimovitch therefore holds, is dependent on functional 

 •condition. The striae are due to the fibrillae containing, in series, particles 

 which give the silver reaction alternating with others which do not. 



He found the striae also in nerve cells but not in non-medullated fibres 

 such as those of the olfactory nerve, the sympathetic and the nerve fibres, of 

 insects and molluscs, which appeared finely granular after the action of the 

 reagent. . , 



That there are, besides nerve cells and fibres, other tissue structures which 

 •exhibit, like them, a striation after treatment with silver nitrate, has been 

 shown by Thin,* Eeevesf and FleschJ in cartilage, and by Babl§ in the 

 adventitia of blood-vessels, in the connective tissue of the gastric submucosa, 

 in the intercellular material (fluid ?) lying between fat-holding cells, in the 

 hepatic cylinders of the lobules of the human liver, as well as in articular 

 cartilage. The last-named observer obtained these results by treatment of the 

 tissues in question, first with a 1-per-cent. solution of silver nitrate containing 

 also 10 per cent, of free nitric acid, subsequently with a 2- to 5-per-cent. 

 solution of potassium bichromate and followed by exposure to sunlight. 



As to the mode of production of these striations Eabl adopts and expands 

 Boveri's explanation. 



It may finally be mentioned that some observers have held that the striae 



* " On the Structure of Hyaline Cartilage," 1 Quart. Journ. of Micro. Sci.,' vol. 16, 

 1875, p. 1. 



t "The Matrix of Articular Cartilage," ' British Medical Journal,' 1876, vol. 2, p. 616. 



J " Bemerkungen zur Kritik der Tinctious-Praparate," ' Zeit. fur -wiss. Mikr.,' vol. 2, 

 1885, p. 464. " > 



§ "Zur geschichtete Niederschlage bei Behandlung der Gewebe mit Argentuni 

 nitricum," ' Sitzungsb. der Wiener Akad., Math-naturw. CI.,' vol. 102, Abth. 3, 1893, 

 p. 342. 



