70 



because the pus-globules being twice as large as the blood discs, they 

 could not escape while the others are retained. He thinks it is 

 proved, therefore, that hepatic and other abscesses following opera- 

 tions, blows, &c, arise from inflammation of a vein; the globules of 

 pus mingling with the blood are conveyed to the spot, and being 

 arrested there, cause inflammation and abscess. Hasse, in his ana- 

 tomical description of the "Diseases of the Organs of Respiration" 

 1846, and Rayner coincide in this view. Lebert attributes them 

 to a general pyogenic diathesis. From a review of the authorities, 

 Ranking, in his Retrospective Address, thinks the old idea of pus 

 being brought from an old abscess, or from a small venous inflamma- 

 tion, to form those large purulent accumulations which are sometimes 

 met with, is untenable. He thinks Lebert's evidence conclusive, that 

 the pus is the result of inflammation in the place where it appears; 

 and with Budd, and Henle, that the cause of the inflammation is the 

 irritation of the globules of pus, conveyed with the blood from the 

 original seat of suppuration. 



41. The next subject to which the committee would turn their 

 attention, is one of paramount importance in pathology. They allude 

 to certain productions anormally developed in the system. These 

 productions deposited, and growing in the natural tissues, at first, to 

 all appearance wholly inert and inoffensive, soon increasing with 

 such rapidity both in size and number, as to present an aspect en- 

 tirely different from their early harmlessness, are in the end among 

 the most deleterious and irremediable disorders of the human frame. 

 "One feature," Dr. Stille* remarks, "is common to them all; a tend- 

 ency to softening, which induces a greater or less destruction of the 

 tissues in which they are deposited." 



In their origin, M. Baronf considers all heterologous formations 

 to be identical, believing (with Andral in respect to tubercle) that 

 they originate in a perverted action of ordinary secretion, by which 

 instead of a normal cell, one is formed which goes through the phases 

 of diseased development exhibited in the different varieties of acci- 

 dental tissue. The diseased cell is, in its first stage, identical in 

 every species of morbid development, whether cancer, melanosis, 

 tubercle, false membrane, or hydatid. He differs from all those who 

 attribute the various forms of accidental tissue to low degrees of in- 

 flammation. He does not decide what it is which gives the cell its 



* Work quoted. f Gazette Medicale, March, 1S45. 



