On the minute anatomy of the neuro-muscular spindles of the cat, and on their physiological significance / by Angelo Ruffini.

  • Ruffini, Angelo, 1864-1929.
Date:
[1898]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the minute anatomy of the neuro-muscular spindles of the cat, and on their physiological significance / by Angelo Ruffini. 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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    they were sensory. It must be admitted by any temperate and dispassionate critic that this hypothesis was then premature and an a priori view without adequate anatomical fact for it. I was forced to enter on this question elsewhere1 and will not now repeat the grounds for my critique; there seems to me neither place nor further necessity. To the various interpretations given of the spindle other than the sense-organ view it is now no longer necessary to refer. Of the numerous names given to these special structures I have cited only a few. None of those proposed seem to me to fully satisfy the requirements exacted by the history or morphology of the tissue. General usage sanctions Kiihne’s name, “muscle-spindle.” To change it for a new one seems to me hardly worth while. Yet it does seem to me necessary to prefix to the adjective muscular the further epithet neuro, thus in part adopting the suggestion of Roth. I therefore speak of neuromuscular spindles. The prefix neuro is required because as shown below the nerve-endings constitute the most interesting features of the whole specialised structure. I must preface my description of the nerve-endings in the neuromuscular spindles of the cat by a review of the structural characters of the spindles in mammals as a whole. The mammalian neuromuscular spindle requires a description quite apart from the neuromuscular spindles studied in amphibia and reptiles. The following general critique is based on the most interesting work of Sherrington, on Kolliker’s summary, and on my own researches. We have in the neuromuscular spindles of mammals to consider (1) their general form, (2) their topography, (3) their number, (4) the capsule and its relationships, (5) the lymphatic space, (6) the bundle of striped muscle-fibres (bundle of Weissmann), (7) the nerve-fibres and their endings. (1) Form. The neuromuscular spindle is not invariably fusiform, although approximately so in the vast majority of cases. In my gold preparations the proximal end is very often the larger. Along the organ occur one or more fusiform dilatations which as will be shown coincide with regions of nerve-ending. Frequently a spindle is com- pound, that is, consists of two or rarely three simple spindles conjoined (Sherrington). The entire length is given by Kolliker at 7—4 mm. by Sherrington at 8—3’5 mm. The diameter at entrance of the nerve-fibres varies according to Kolliker between 72 p, and 9 p, and 1 Anat. Anzeig. 1893.