Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A contribution to the study of myelitis / by S.G. Webber. 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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![apex, was to be seen an interesting change in the hypoglossal nuclens. The nerve-cells were few in number; many had an appearance as if filled with an amorplious material with few granulations, and those few crowded to one side, eitlier with- out a nncleus, or, when present, it was elongated and pushed to one side. There were many swollen axis cylinders. These I at first thought were changed capillaries, but on careful ex- amination I saw that they were solid, were not furnished with nuclei; one or two could be traced to nerve-cells; they were confined strictly to the nucleus and the track of the nerve passing from that toward the periphery ; also there were no anastomoses. They were more or less varicose, some were twisted like a cork-screw. At a higher level wei*e numerous cells, but atroj)hied, globular, and with few or no processes, very different from the normal cells of the hypoglossal. JVerves.—A i^osterior root in the lumbar region showed a large number of fibres with axis cylinders, but instead of being near the centre of the fibre they were mostly excentric ; the myaline was coagulated, and in some cases there was an exudation of an amorphous material, which seemed to have ]mshed both the liedullary sheath and axis cylinder to one side; sometimes this exudation wms in the centre of the med- ullary sheath. On specimens put uj) in Canada balsam, this exudation seemed to be structureless, and was not tinted ; possibly it had been dissolved out by the method of prepara- tion. .In many fibres there was ho axis cylinder, but the cen- tre of the sheath was occupied by a small coagulated mass, which did not stain from carmine, the sheath remaining as large as, or larger than usual. A very large proportion of the space was filled wi^h small circles of connective tissue, inclos- ing a free space about as large as an axis cylinder, with amor- phous, homogeneous contents, which were not stained by carmine. The anterior root showed a more extensive change. There were only a few axis cylinders remaining—not more than eight or ten in each bundle of fibres. The rest of the section was composed entirely of the empty sheaths appearing as cir- cles or masses of a granular a|)pearance under low power.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2228834x_0010.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
