GERMINAL MATTER IN DISEASE. 6 1 



changes, can be explained, if the artificial terms, cell-wall, 

 cell-contents ', nucleus, be given up. In all acute internal 

 inflammations and in fevers a much larger quantity of in- 

 animate pabulum is taken up by certain cells and con- 

 verted into germinal matter than in the normal state. 

 Hence there is, at least in the parts affected, increase in 

 bulk. Cells of particular organs, which live very slowly in 

 health, live very fast in certain forms of disease. More 

 pabulum reaches them, and they grow more rapidly in 

 consequence. 



In cells which have been growing very rapidly and are 

 returning to their normal condition, in which the access of 

 nutrient pabulum is more restricted than in the abnormal state, 

 as is also the case in normal cells passing from the em- 

 bryonic to the fully-formed state, the outer part of the 

 germinal matter undergoes conversion into formed material, 

 and this last increases although the supply of pabulum is 

 reduced. 



From these observations it follows that disease may re- 

 sult in two ways either from the cells of an organ growing 

 and multiplying faster than in the normal state, or from 

 their doing so more slowly. In the one case, the normal 

 restrictions under which growth takes places are diminished ; 

 in the other, the restrictions are greatly increased. Pneumonia, 

 or inflammation of the lung, may be adduced as a striking 

 example of the first condition, for in this disease millions of 

 minute masses of germinal matter which have escaped from 

 the blood suspended in liquor sanguinis (exudation) grow and 

 multiply very rapidly in the air cells of the lung, and nutrient 

 constituents are diverted from other parts of the body to this 

 focus of morbid activity. Contraction and condensation of 



