Treatise Upon the Genesis and Development of the Dental Follicles to the Epoch of the Eruption of the Teeth. [Volume: 2, Issue: 11, June, 1861, pp. 587-601]

GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE DENTAL FOLLICLES. 595

expense of the substance of the nucleus, for they are produced around the
latter as a centre of generation. In some elements it originates upon the
different points of the circumference of the nucleus, and this is soon surrounded with more or less numerous rays, (star-like fibro-plastic bodies,)
which ramify and anastomose reciprocally. They thus form at the points
where they exist, and when their evolution into fibres is completed, the
net-work or woof of laminated fibres of the pulp, in the meshes of which
the elements of the organ are mingled.
When. the fibro-plastic bodies have reached the condition of laminated
fibres in consequence of the phases of their development, their nucleus
atrophies and disappears, whereas the new nuclei undergo the same evolution at the heart of the organ.*
A fact worthy of remark in the study of the texture of the bulb in subjects of different species but of corresponding ages, is, as has been mentioned, the complete identity in the anatomic composition of that organ
among vertebrated animals, and consequently the analogy in the appearance of the tissue under the microscope, whatever the differences of form
and size may otherwise be. There is especially the same mode in the distribution of the nuclei in the amorphous matter, the same manner in the
arrangement and configuration of the fibro-plastic bodies, situated in the
neighborhood of the base of the bulb near the point of continuity with
the follicular wall. In this latter point, it is proved that the tissue is
always more transparent than in the rest of the organ, and the fibro-plastic, star-like bodies can be more readily found there, plunged in a transparent amorphous matter, which is less granulated than in the other
parts. Finally, the tissue of the organ is pnuch more transparent on the
free edge of the bulb than elsewhere, because the amorphous matter predominates there over the nuclei, (pl. v., fig. 3, a.) The only particularities between the different groups of mammifers which are worthy of notice
are, that the tissue sometimes shows great transparency, and that the nuclei as well as the amorphous matter are very pale, (ruminants;) at other
times the amorphous matter is more granulated, the nuclei and fusiform
bodies darker, (pachyderms;) or else the star-like or fusiform fibro-plastic
bodies are more numerous than the nuclei near the adherent base of the
bulb, (man and the carnivora.) But the general characters of texture
are so decided that it is always possible to recognize the bulb by its special constitution, in a preparation combining all the component parts of a
follicle.
AMORPHOUS MATTER AND SURFACE OF THE BULB OF THE FPETUS.-The
transparent amorphous matter interposed between the nuclei extends be

* These are the fibro-plastic, fusiform, star like bodies called by Purkinje and
Raschkow (1835) "angular granules united by very loose threads of cellular tissue." It
is the same arrangement spoken of by Kolliker, Lent, and Hannover, under the name
of the star-like cells of the dental pulp.