Dr. Emil Holmgren and the liver cell / by E.A. Schäfer.

  • Sharpey-Schäfer, E. A. (Edward Albert), Sir, 1850-1935.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dr. Emil Holmgren and the liver cell / by E.A. Schäfer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    gelatine by reason of their close adhesion to the surrounding cells. But in many parts of these preparations the gelatine has shrunk away from the wall as a whole leaving no external line of colouring matter such as is represented by Dr. Holmgren, and in these parts the intracellular canals are just as fully injected as elsewhere. Nor is there in the liver so far as my own observations go (and in this matter I entirely agree with Professor Browicz) any space between blood-capillaries and liver-cells, the cells being in the closest possible apposition to the walls of the vessels Moreover extravasations due to escape of the injection-mass from the blood-vessels do not take the form described by Holmgren but appear as irregular masses excavating their way between the liver-cells and sending no oifsets whatever into the interior of the cells. That the canaliculi shown in the preparations described by me are artefacts is a supposition which I should have supposed could not be entertained for a moment by any experienced histologist. They are well defined anastomosing passages which form a network within nearly every cell throughout the whole liver. The in- jection material which fills them is of the same intense colour as that within the blood-capillaries and appears at places to be connected with this by fine threads. That it has not passed into the cells by way of the lymphatics appears evident from the fact that such in- jection material as is found in the lymphatics, e. g. in those of the portal canals, is of a far paler tint than the material within the blood- vessels and intracellular canaliculi; the result, as I suppose, of dilution with lymph. From these evidences the most probable explanation seemed and still seems to me that the injection has passed directly from the interior of the capillaries into the intracellular canaliculi by means of pre-existent communications2). I do not deny the possi- bility that the injection might first pass into perivascular lymphatic clefts (assuming that such clefts really exist; an assumption which is, to say the least, open to considerable doubt); there is no clear evidence of its having done so and, moreover, on this hypothesis it would be still more difficult to understand why it should have passed into the interior of the cells in so extraordinarily complete a manner throughout the whole organ as is seen in these preparations, rather than having made its escape by way of the efferent lymphatics. Remarkable as this injection from the blood-vessels of intracellular canaliculi at first sight appears it must be borne in mind that the 1) This is nowhere more clearly shown than in a figure given by Dr. Holmgren himself (see this Journal, Bd. 22, p. 10). 2) I regret that in my first communication (loc. cit. p. 20) I repre- sented Professor Browicz as agreeing with me that the preparations in- dicate a direct communication between the vessels and liver-cells, whereas Professor Browicz speaks of it as indirect. But the actual difference between our views seems to me far less than is indicated by these terms.