1901 - 2 .] Prof. Schafer on Injection of Liver Cells. 69 
regarded the appearance as purely accidental, as it certainly was 
inexplicable on the ideas which were then prevalent regarding the 
structure of the liver and the relation of the liver cells to the 
blood-vessels. Whatever may have been the reason, it is a matter 
for regret that so important an observation should have been 
suffered to lie so long dormant. Por it not only affords an 
explanation of the presence within the liver cells of the easily 
squeezable erythrocytes, which Professor Browicz has shown to 
occur even in the normal liver, and in larger numbers under 
abnormal conditions, but may also help to account for phenomena 
in connection with this organ which have hitherto been obscure. 
It is impossible to overrate the value of a fact which appears to 
demonstrate the existence within the cells of any organ of 
vascular canals which are normally too narrow to admit blood- 
corpuscles, but which are doubtless capable of conveying the fluid 
portion of the blood directly to the cell protoplasm. 
I have submitted sections of the liver in question to Professor 
Browicz, who agrees with me that they unmistakably demonstrate 
the existence of channels within the cells communicating directly 
with the blood-vessels. 
Since the above was written, my attention has been drawn to a 
paper entitled “ Preliminary note on inter- and intra-cellular 
passages in the liver of the frog,” by J. W. Praser and E. Hewat 
Praser ( Journal of Anatomy and Physiology , vol. xxix., 1895, 
p. 240), in which the authors describe and figure in the livers of 
frogs injected from the bulbus aortse with Hoyer’s bichromate 
gelatine, and with Carter’s carmine gelatine, fine passages filled with 
injection within the protoplasm, and even penetrating to the 
nucleus of some of the liver cells. The authors conclude that 
these passages are in direct communication with the blood-vessels, 
and that their function is nutritive. I have no doubt that, 
although less completely shown, the canals referred to are of 
the same nature as those which I have described in this paper. 
[Issued separately March 8 , 1902 .) 
