Zur Kenntnis der H�lsenkapillaren der Milz

Roots and early routes of neuroendocrinology

Carl C. Speidel (1919) and Ernst Scharrer (1928) were privileged witnesses of the encounter between neurons and hormones, a biological phenomenon that had been occurring in nature during millions of years of evolution, as Berta Scharrer started to unfold since 1935 on. The story of neurosecretion is intimately associated to that of the hypothalamus, such a "marvellous region", as Wolfgang Bargmann (1975) called it. This story started more than two millennia ago. We have made an effort to trace the roots of the discoveries that gave rise to a medical discipline, neuroendocrinology. Our trip to the roots covers a period from the fourth century BC, when an extraordinary Medical School was founded in Alexandria, and extends into the late 1970s of the twentieth century, when neuroendocrine research had started to grow exponentially. An effort has been made to track back the origin of each piece of knowledge that was constructing, brick upon brick, the building of this new medical science, hoping that it would help neuroendocrinologists of the new era to find their own roots, to meet their ancestors. Tracking the roots of a particular phenomenon provides the opportunity to have an overview of the whole phenomenon, allowing comprehension rather than merely knowledge. An important purpose pursued throughout this article was to pay a tribute to all those who, in the early days, contributed to the brain-endocrine encounter. We have tried our best to bring back the achievements of most of them.

[On the endogenous peroxidase in the spleen of swine (author's transl)]

We studied the distribution of endogenous peroxidase in the spleen of swine by modifications of the Graham and Karnovsky diaminobenzidine procedure. There is a peroxidatic activity in the majority of the ellipsoid cells (cells of the sheathed capillaries of Schweigger-Seidel), which is localized in the endoplasmic reticulum and the perinuclear cisterna. This staining is inhibited completely by aminotriazole and is rapidly destroyed even by low concentratoins of glutaraldehyde. Furthermore, the reaction is abolished after boiling of tissue sections or in the absence of H2O2. The macrophages of the red pulp and a minority of the ellipsoid cells are peroxidase negative. Our results are discussed in respect to some recent studies on the system of mononuclear phagocytes. It is suggested, that the enzyme active ellipsoid cells represent a special form of macrophages, enzyme histochemically related to Kupffer cells and resident peritoneal macrophages. The enzyme negative cells of the ellipsoids are probably fibroblasts.