CELL IN DISEASE. 



59 



place be reduced in consequence of an insufficient supply 

 of nourishment, or from other causes, a diseased state may 

 result. So that, in the great majority of cases, disease or 

 the morbid state essentially differs from health or the healthy 

 state in an increased or reduced rate of growth and multi- 

 plication of the germinal matter of one or more particular 

 tissues or organs. In the process of inflammation, in the 

 formation of inflammatory products, as lymph and pus, in the 

 production of tubercle and cancer, we see the results of in- 

 creased multiplication of the germinal matter of the tissues 

 or of the germinal matter derived from the blood, con- 

 sequent upon the appropriation of excess of nutrient pabulum. 

 In the shrinking, and hardening, and wasting which occur 

 in many tissues and organs in disease, we see the effects of 

 the germinal matter of a texture being supplied with too 

 little nutrient pabulum, in consequence sometimes of an 

 alteration in the pabulum itself, sometimes of an undue 

 thickening and condensation of the tissue which forms the 

 permeable septum, which intervenes between the pabulum 

 and the germinal matter. 



The above observations may be illustrated by reference 

 to what takes place when pus is formed from an epithelial 

 cell, in which the nutrition of the germinal matter, and 

 consequently its rate of growth, is much increased. And 

 the changes which occur in the liver cell in cases of wasting 

 and contraction of that organ (cirrhosis) may be advanced 

 as an illustration of a disease which consists essentially in 

 the occurrence of changes at a slower rate than would be 

 the case in the normal condition, consequent upon the 

 normal access of pabulum to the germinal matter being 

 interfered with. 



