NERVE ULTRASTRUCTURE AS REVEALED BY X-RAY DIFFRACTION AND POLARIZED LIGHT STUDIES
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
The beginning of our knowledge of the ultrastructure of nerve fibers may be traced to the middle of the last century when Ch. G. Ehrenberg (1) discovered that nerves are doubly refringent. The polarization optics was fruitfully applied some years later by Valentin (2) and Klebs (3) who showed that the axis cylinder is weakly positively birefringent with respect to the fiber length, while the myelin sheath is negative, the optic axes of the myelin micelles being radially disposed. It should be noted that these discoveries were made more or less contemporaneously with the trail-blazing work of Du Bois Reymond and of Hermann on the electrical properties of nerves. Important further advances were made in the last quarter of the century by v. Ebner, Apathy, Friedländer and Ambronn, their work coming at the time of the rapid expansion of classical electrophysiology and morphology in Germany. With the rise of physical...
