Remarks on Quekett's Histology, On Kölliker's Human histology, and on the physiological importance of the nucleus of the cell / by Martin Barry, M.D.

  • Barry, M. (Martin), 1802-1855.
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on Quekett's Histology, On Kölliker's Human histology, and on the physiological importance of the nucleus of the cell / by Martin Barry, M.D. 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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    up in all these phases, present to those wlio have begun the investiga- tion at the wrong end a structure more ambiguous than any other. The drawing, however, of a fibril given by Professor Kolliker, figs. 36 h and 89 h, was taken, it appears, from one of the perenni- branchiate ampliibia, where, as he says, the fibrils are large, and perhaps above all others adajited for this investigation. (Zc. p. 239). I have already said that that figure sliows transverse striae in muscle to arise from the fibrils. But that figure shows something more than this, and gives proof how well adapted the perenni- branchiate amphibia are for the investigation; for, in a German edition of Kolliker's Histology, that very figure was pointed out to me by Purkinje himself, with a remark to this effect: Da sind Ihre zwei Spiraleu ( there are your two spirals). He saw, and I saw with him, that a structure which, nearly every day for months, I had the opportunity of preparing anew, and demonstrating to Purkinje, had been seen and delineated, but not understood by Kolliker. This observer eiTS in supposing my A'iews on the spiral structure of muscle to have been propounded quite lately for the first time; a proof that, to continental physiologists, what is published in the Philosophical Transactions often remains unknown. It ap- pears that he became acquainted with my views through a paper in Miiller's Archiv. Heft vj. for 1850, without observing that what that paper contained was only the account of a rcneioal of inquiries on a subject, regarding which my views had been recorded eight years before, viz., in the Phil, Trans, for 1842 ; and he omits to say that the said paper was translated from the English, and com- municated to the Archiv. by—a Purkinje. I appeal- to all who have the honour of knowing, in connection with the microscope, the rigorously investigating, most cautious, and circumspect Purkinje, whether there lives the man less likely to be misled by a myth or by fantastic images than he. The fibre forming vegetable membrane, was in 1852 delineated by Agardh as having a twin spiral form} This in 1842 I had shown to be the \evj form of the fully developed and acting muscular fibril, as well as the very form of the axile fibre in nerve. And two hundred drawings of mine, then published,- sliow that I had been unable to see any difference between the markings origi- nally presented by organic fibre in general, and those of muscular fibrils of about the same size. THE SPIRAL FORM. One of my announcements that met with absolute derision was, ' De celltda vcgctahili fibrillis tenuiasimis C07itcxta. Lunilse, 1852. ^ In the 157 figures ihi^n engraved—Phil. Trans., 1842. The arrangement of many of those fignres is not auch as to bring together all those of the same tissue, hut simply to show identity in the size and structure of parts com])osing tissues of all sorts. Thus, for instance, in Plate VIII., figures of spirals of the cornea, of muscle, and of nerve, are mixed np with those of vegetable spirals.