Nerve terminations:—
Meissner’s corpuscles.—Take the tip of an index finger immediately after amputation. Place part of it at once in chloride of gold solution, and the rest in Müller’s fluid until it is hardened.
Sections stained with chloride of gold should be mounted in Farrant’s medium. The other sections may be stained in picrocarmine or eosine and hæmatoxyline.
Pacini’s corpuscles.—May be dissected out on the smaller branches of the digital nerves, or may be found in the mesentery of the cat. The latter should be spread out on wood, hardened in Müller’s fluid, stained in hæmatoxyline, and mounted in balsam.
Other forms of tactile corpuscles may be studied in the tongues of frogs, ducks, or geese. A network of nervous fibrils should be studied in the cornea. Take the cornea of a newly killed frog or cat and stain with chloride of gold (p. [82]).
The end plates in which the nerves terminate in muscle may be studied by placing specimens of living muscle of some cold blooded animal into chloride of gold solution, and staining rather deeply.
Arteries.—Take a piece of the aorta, a piece of some medium artery, as the renal or radial, and harden in Müller’s fluid. Stain in picrocarmine and always in eosine and hæmatoxyline. Arterioles are best studied in sections of the various organs. Thus they are seen in each Malpighian body of the spleen, in the boundary zone of the kidney, and so on. A longitudinal surface view can also be obtained by staining and examining the pia mater.
Veins.—Remove, harden, and stain in the same way.
Capillaries.—May be very well seen in the foot of the frog.