On out-lying nerve-cells in the mammalian spinal-cord / by C.S. Sherrington ; communicated by M. Foster.

  • Sherrington, Charles Scott, Sir, 1857-1952.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On out-lying nerve-cells in the mammalian spinal-cord / by C.S. Sherrington ; communicated by M. Foster. 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.

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    Out-hjing Cells in the Anterior Column. Among the bundles of transverse fibres slanting from the mesial edge of the ventral horn toward the depth of the ventral fissure and the white commissure can, not infrequently, be found multipolar ganglion-cells. The cells somewhat resemble in form the cells of the ventral cornu itself, but I have not found them quite so large as are the latter. They are, in my specimens, obviously triradiate. The largest I have measured is 38 g in diameter, from the middle of one side across the cell body to the base of the opposite cell-process. Fig. 1, Plate 3, shows the position and form of one of these out-lying individuals, from tlie cervical cord of the Dog between the points of exit of the first and second nerves. The section is in the transverse plane of the cord. Fig. 2, Plate 4, gives an example of another such cell from the lower part of the lumbar enlargement of the Human cord. The cell does not lie far out from the limiting edge of the grey cornu. It is much smaller than a neighbouring cell belonging to tlie superficial region of the cornu. The cornual cell can be seen to give a branch into the same bundle of transverse fibres as harbours the smaller and out-lying cell. Similar cells I have observed to occur in both the cervical and in the lumbar regions of the cord, and have seen examples in the Monkey and Oat, as well ns in Man and in the Dog. They have somewhat the appearance of being aberrant members of a group of cells which occurs scattered in more or less broken fashion along the deeper part of the mesial edge of the ventral grey horn, and best seen just above the lumbar enlargement. This group was called attention to in the Human cord by PioK,^' and is characterised, according to him, by the fact that the cells give off large processes into the fibre-bundles of the white commissure. The references to out-lying cells in the anterior column which I have been able to discover are three. The earliest by Torquato Beisso in 1873 ; he figures a specimen, which was obtained from the cord of the Ox. He writes,! La figura dimostra come una grossa cellula bipolare contenuta nell’ intreciamento della commissura mandi un prolungamento die lipiegando si perde fra le fibre piii mediane della sostanza grigia.” A second reference is by ScHiEFFERDECKER.:j; In speaking of the structure of the cord in the lumbar region of, apparently, the Canine cord, he writes that he has found occasional cells in the white commissure, sometimes bipolar, but more often “ shaped like arrowheads.” He was, it would seem, not aware of the observation by Beisso. A third reference is by PiCK,§ who, after describing the cells of the ventral cornu which give off processes from the mesial edge of the cornu, goes on to speak of the occasional occurrence in the white commissure of the Human cord of cells similar to those noted by Schiefferdecker in the lumbar cord of the Dog. He concludes by * Loc. cit. t Loc. cit., p. 37. I Virchow’s ‘ Arcbiv,’ vol. 67, p. 598. § Loc. cit.