The bi-polar cells of the spinal cord and their connections / by Fredk. W. Mott.

  • Mott, F. W. (Frederick Walker), 1853-1926.
Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The bi-polar cells of the spinal cord and their connections / by Fredk. W. Mott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    3/30 (page 435)
    passing out of the postero-external column on their way to the anterior horns. Microscopical examination, however, shows beyond a doubt that fibres of the postero-external column, coming from the sacral and lumbar nerves, have their station in the lower part of Clarke’s column. Physiological experiments in monkeys and pathological investigations in cases of injury and diseases of the roots of the cauda equina show degenera- tion of the fine nerve plexus around the cells of the posterior vesicular column. The evidence of the lower connection of this group of cells will be first considered microscopically. If the cord of a foetus he examined in the lower dorsal region, sections stained by Weigert’s method show bundles of fibres passing out of the postero-external column into the posterior horn like a brush {vide micro-photograph 1.), and limiting on the outside a group of cells lying in neuroglia substance. The cells are not larger than the adjacent solitary cells, and there is very little evidence of any fine plexus of nerve fibrillse around them. The cells measure at this period about 20 /i (average). At successive periods of growth of the spinal cord, namely, four months, nine months, two years, and adult, transverse vertical sections showed the cells to be slowly in- creasing in size. ^ At two years they are three times as large, 60 and iiithe adult even more than that, measuring on an average 70 /i {vide micro-photograph 2). The latter measurement agrees pretty accurately with the average size determined by Sherrington.^ In the spinal cord of a child two years old I was fortu- nate enough to obtain a section showing fibres passing out of the postero-external column, breaking up into a fine brush of fibrillffi, with varicosities thereon around the cells of the column. (See fig. 2.) Examinations of other sections from a very well-hardened adult spinal cord, made in a vertical direction, showed the