380 
DR. LIONEL BEALE ON THE 
are then stopped and the liver allowed to become cool. When the size has set, very 
thin sections can be obtained without difficulty. The section must be carefully 
washed before examination, in order to remove loose cells, &c. from the surface 
which would interfere with its definition. It may be placed in thin syrup, glycerine 
or dilute alcohol, and will bear examination with a quarter, or with an eighth of an 
inch object-glass (400 diameters). 
By injecting the ducts, the lymphatics are also injected. If the duct does not 
burst, colourless fluid returns by the lymphatics, which may thus be injected with 
plain size, while the colouring matter remains in the duct. If a small duct rupture, 
the injection often enters the abundant plexus of lymphatics in the portal canals, and 
may even reach the thoracic duct, as occurred to Kiernan, and once to myself, in 
the case of a rabbit. 
A human liver which has afforded many excellent specimens, has been injected 
with four colours, two transparent, and two opake ; as follows, artery with vermi- 
lion ; portal vein with flake-white ; hepatic vein with lake, and the duct with 
Prussian blue. 
Evidence of the existence of a Tubular Basement Membrane in which the Lwer -cells 
are contained. 
It is not uncommon to find cells with shreds of delicate membrane attached to 
them in specimens which have been slightly hardened in dilute alcohol. A drawing 
which has not been published shows a cell from the rabbit’s liver enclosed in a 
membrane, which can be traced beyond it for some distance as a very narrow 
contracted tube. 
This delicate basement membrane is also well displayed in certain specimens in 
which a curious chemical change has taken place in the contents of the tube. In a 
section of dog’s liver, which had been soaking for some time in a weak solution of 
soda, most of the cells appeared to have been dissolved at their outer part, and in 
consequence, a fusion of the matter of which they were composed had taken place, 
causing the formation of a highly refracting mass within the basement membrane, 
the outline of which was rendered very distinct. This preparation is represented in 
Plate XV. fig. 18, and at a one of the tubes, separated and drawn out with its con- 
tents contracted within it, is shown. 
I have a drawing of a somewhat similar change in the liver of a flounder which 
had been treated with soda, and afterwards by acetic acid, causing the precipitation 
of some of the constituents of the bile which had been previously dissolved by the 
soda. By pressure some of these highly refractive masses were broken, and by 
examination with a very dull light, the continuity of the delicate basement membrane 
could be traced between them. 
When sections of liver have been soaked for some time in strong syrup or glyce- 
rine, the cells in the interior of the tubes shrink from exosmosis, and the delicate 
