The chromaphil tissues and the adrenal medulla

Abstract
The recognition of the extra-adrenal chromaphil cells in mammals and the characteristic reaction with chromium salts, by which they are not universally designated and homologised with the medulla of the adrenals, is due to Stilling. The author found in the abdominal sympathetic small bodies composed of cells having the same chromaphil reaction as those forming the medulla of the adrenal. He states that some are nearly a centimetre in length, while others are only just visible to the naked eye. They are round, oval, or elongated in form, and their thickness is never more than a few millimetres. They have a tunica propria , small vessels and capillaries. Between the capillaries are cells which resemble in all respects those of he adrenal medulla. The resemblance between the chromaphil corpuscles of the sympathetic and the medulla of the adrenal is rendered all the greater by the occurrence in the latter of occasional nerve cells. Stilling found these corpuscles in the rabbit, the cat, and the dog, and especially in young animals. He gives details of a method for displaying them. Stilling also discovered that the carotid body contains cells of the same character as those forming the adrenal medulla and the chromaphill corpuscles of the sympathetic. Later, Kohn and Kose confirmed and extended these observations, laying stress on the point that these chromaphil cells are common and typical elements of the mammalian sympathetic system. Kohn’s view is that what is ordinarily called the cortex of the adrenal is in reality the only part which ought to be called adrenal at all, while the medulla is simply the “paraganglion suprarenale,” a group of what he calls “chromaffine Zellen.” which has become included in the adrenal.

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