Diseases of the nose and its accessory cavities.

  • Watson, W. Spencer (William Spencer), 1836-1906.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the nose and its accessory cavities. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    knot) O-OOl'—0-002'. In tlie frog 6 to 10 extraordinarily long cilia (they reacb. to 0'04') take the place of this top-knot (fig. 2). They send off very slowly waving motions, which cause no perceptible currents in the surrounding fluidity. This very remarkable modification of this, at, all events, significant struct are for the sense of smell is, moreover, particularly repre- sented in fig. 3 (of Tick's work, not here repre- sented). [The same letters are used to denote corresponding parts in fig. 1 and fig. 2 in the text.] The little rods are prolongations from the cells (5, figs. 1 and 2). They differ essentially in ap- pearance and microscopic reaction from the epi- thelial cells, have a nucleus like a small bladder, and fine molecular contents. It is scarcely to be doubted that these cells are of nerve matter, and we may regard them as ganglion cells. They present, when one looks at a perpendi- cular section through the olfactory mucous mem- brane, a particular appearance of a layer complete in itself. Provisionally the name of the ' olfactory Tig 2. cells' has been given to the cells in question. ^5rofSe^l5S?;^Each 'olfactory cell' sends off a prolongation S?treiif/ceiif?fot: opposite the little rod into the deep substance of ^hCT°i^rS^otoifectory ^^^ mucous membrane. It is for some distance ceU; e, cilia; (^,^centrai g^ollcu in knots, but vcry fine, and easily changed, cell. and therefore difficult to examine. Although the connection of such a prolongation with the elements of the olfactory nerve has not, up to the present time, been seen with precision, it is nevertheless in a high degree probable. We can, therefore, without departing far from the ground of matters of fact, describe the nervous apparatus of the sense of smell in the following manner: every element of the olfactory nerve contains, lying immediately under the cylindrical epithelium of the mucous membrane, a ganglion cell, and projects beyond this as a fine rod, which also, in different animals, sends out a final variously formed prolongation (ciliated in the frog, a single top-knot in mam- malia) above the surface of the epithelium free in the nasal cavities. —Fick, Anatomic und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane. § 120.