a. [f. Gr. τιγροειδής like a tiger: see -OID.] Resembling a tiger or tiger’s skin; marked like a tiger. Tigroid body (Path.): see quots. Also absol. as sb.
1901. Buck’s Handbk. Med. Sc., II. 338. The tigroid in the cell bodies of the nuclei of origin of the motor cerebral nerves. Ibid. A part of the dendrite where tigroid bodies disappear.
1904. Titchener, trans. Wundt’s Physiol. Psychol., I. 41. When highly magnified, most nerve-cells show … a fibrillated structure; clusters of granules are set … between the meshes of this fibrillar network…. The granular deposits are named, from their discoverer, the corpuscles of Nissl; they are also known as tigroid bodies, or as chromophilous substance.
1909. Cent. Dict. Suppl., s.v. Granule, Nissl granules, small, deeply staining bodies found by Nissl in the cytoplasm of nerve cells…. Also called Nissl’s bodies and tigroid.
Hence Tigrolysis [Gr. λύσις dissolution], the breaking down of the tigroid substance in the nerve-cell; Tigrolytic a., of or pertaining to tigrolysis.
1903. Buck’s Handbk. Med. Sc., VI. 264. This disintegration … of the tigroid has been variously designated…. Kohnstamm gives it the name tigrolysis,… which I prefer. Ibid. Cells still tigrolytic may be observed.
