Injuries of nerves and their consequences - Reflex Sympathetic ...

ANATOMY OF NERVES. 19
wise interpreted by Laugerhaus.* He considers "that
processes
of non-medullated nerve fibres from the cutis
penetrate between the cells of the rete Malpighii, exactly
in the way described by Hager and Cohnheim as the
mode of termination of nerves in the cornea. These nerve
fibrils pass again into small cells lying between the deeper
cells of the rete mucosum, whence fine fibrous outrunners
enter the upper layers, to terminate finally in slightly
clubbed extremities just beneath the horny layer." These
have no relation to tact corpuscles, and the research of
Langerhaus, in which Strieker seems to have faith, tends
to weaken the belief in terminal peripheral nerve loops
for which also physiological ground is wanting.
On the other hand, while it is as yet uncertain whether
the sensitive fibres end externally in loops or in absolutely
free ends, it is generally held that a vast number are externally
related in some way to the little bodies known as
the corpuscles of Meissner, of Vater, or Pacini (Vater,
Pacinische Korperchen), and of Krause. The latter are
found chiefly on mucous surfaces, those of Pacini in the
submucous cellular tissue, the mesentery, the muscles, and
the papillce of the derm. These bodies are most numerous
in the regions possessed of great tactile sensibility, such as
the cushions of the fingers,
— M. Meissner having counted
eight hundred in a square line of the palmar
last phalanx of the index finger.
face of the
The structure of these corpuscles does not difier so
must have
essentially as to induce the belief that they different physiological functions, were it not for their
varying anatomical relations to tissues.
The tactile corpuscles of Meissner, for instance, consist
of "oblong oval bodies tolerably distinct from the remainder
of the digital papillae in which they
lie. They
* Strieker's Comp. Histol., p. 187 ;
New Sydenham
Soc. edition.