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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
2. No pause or interval of repose occurs during the dilatation of the ventricles. 
3. The diastole of the ventricles precedes the systole. 4. The diastole is pro- 
duced with a power and vigour which lead to the supposition that it is a vital 
active movement, and not simply resulting from the mechanical action of the 
entering stream of blood. Dr. Paton’s experiments were conducted chiefly 
upon fishes and reptiles. 
The Pacchionian Bodies. — These peculiar growths, which are met with in 
the membranes of the brain, and are supposed to be connected with certain 
diseased conditions of the nervous system, have been very carefully investi- 
gated by Dr. Charlton Bastian, of St. Mary’s Hospital, who concludes from 
numerous observations that they have no serious pathological importance. 
They are, he says, perfectly continuous with the arachnoid and have much the 
same structure as this membrane of connective tissue. Their epithelium is 
sometimes arranged in multiple layers. They are developed from a structure- 
less hyaline substance, which grows in the form of a branched net-work. — 
Vide Microscopical Journal, July. 
The State of the Blood-corpuscles during Inanition. — M. Panum’s inquiries 
on this point are of much interest, and seem to have been very carefully 
worked out. M. Panum concludes as follows : — “ (1) The proportion of 
colouring-matter in the red globules does not vary materially during inanition. 
(2) The relation of the quantity of blood to the weight of the body, as 
well as the relation of quantity of the principal constituents of the blood, 
does not vary. (3) The absolute quantity of the blood diminishes, but not 
in a greater ratio than the total mass of the tissues. (4) The relative pro- 
portions of the several constituents of the blood do not vary. (5) The 
blood must be regarded not as a material of nutrition, but as the medium 
through which such material is transmitted. (6) The fibrin and globules 
are not nutritive matters ; but the albumen is, and it is this element of the 
blood which suffers a slight diminution in quantity during inanition.” — Yide 
Gazette Medical, July. 
Termination of the Nerves in the Muscles. — The views of Professor Lionel 
Beale have met with a very determined opponent in a French microscopist, 
M. Rouget, who has laid a memoir, accompanied by numerous microphoto- 
graphs, before the French Academy. This observer states that the nerves do 
not end in a fine net- work of delicate fibres, but in a peculiar terminal 
plate or disk connected with the sarcolemma. He uses the argument of 
authority against Dr. Beale, and says that “ all other observers who have 
devoted themselves to this subject, viz., MM. Krause, Kiihne, "Waldeyer, 
Engelmann, and Letzerich, and more recently MM. Kohnheim and Yulpian, 
have all admitted the existence of the terminal plate, and its entire inde- 
pendence of any nervous net-work.” M. Rouget’s observations and micro- 
scopic photographs lead him to conclude, (1) That [the terminal division 
of the axis cylinder of the motor nerve-fibre constitutes, by anastomosis 
and fusion, a terminal expansion of finely-granular substance, identical with 
that of the terminal filaments of the corpuscles of Pacini, and in immediate 
contact with the contractile substance of the primitive bundle. (2) That 
this nervous expansion is traversed in every direction by minute canals, 
establishing a connection between the numerous nuclei of the plate, and 
communicating probably, on the one hand with the space between the sarco- 
