3. New Forms of Nerve Terminations in the Skin of Mammals

Extract

The new forms have been found in the palms of the raccoon, the Procyon lotor, so named from its habit of dipping its morsels in water before eating them. These forms are three in number, and, in order to prevent any morphological or physiological appellation being applied to them, they have been named, for purposes of description and differentiation, after three ladies respectively, the Browne, the Hoggan, and the Blackwell bodies. The Browne bodies occupy the apices of the dermic papillae, exactly where the Meissner bodies are found in man, monkeys, and marsupials; otherwise they have no resemblance to these bodies. Properly speaking, they are not bodies, but only forked terminations of the nerves, formed generally of two or three prongs, and these are twisted and intertwined in an intricate manner. Nor do they possess any capsular envelopes, the presence of which differentiates them from the Hoggan bodies, that being the only distinct difference between the two.