376 Transactions of the Society. 



■without alcohol, and indeed by all kinds of modifications of method, 

 the result was always the same. At page 13 of his work ' On the 

 Lower Organisms,' in endeavouring to account for the presence of 

 bacteria within the living body, Dr. Bastian says:— "We must 

 imagine that when the vital activity of any organism, whether 

 simple or complex, is on the wane, its constituent particles (being 

 still portions of living matter) are capable of individualizing them- 

 selves, and of growing into the low organisms in question. Just as 

 the life of one of the cells of a higher organism may continue for 

 some time after the death of the organism itself, so in accordance 

 with this latter view, may one of the particles of such a cell be 

 supposed to continue to live after even cell life is impossible." 



This hypothesis of Dr. Bastian's is so exactly applicable to 

 the granular bodies we have described, that we have ventured to 

 quote him, as he expresses even better than we could ourselves the 

 opinions we hold and wish to put on record. 



We believe that in them we supply the missing link between 

 cellular and germ pathology, and its bearing on the causation of 

 disease will become more apparent when, at another time and place, 

 we have an opportunity of showing that granular exodus is not 

 confined to healthy cells, but that at least in one virulent disease 

 we have characteristic granular breaking up of its cells throughout 

 the body, and in that the explanation of its eminently contagious 

 character. 



But the interesting phenomena to be observed in the life-history 

 of these organisms by no means cease with their leaving the parent- 

 cell in the condition of the wandering cells seen in Fig. 13. Even 

 in that direction they may pass beyond the stage seen there, and 

 thus we find that the whole of the fat-cells forming a great fat- 

 tract may pass away, leaving the vascular network which supplied 

 them still existing, or they may still be observed there as numerous 

 granular patches, each with its own nuclear centre which it is about 

 to leave, and which in turn is about to leave the neighbourhood of 

 the blood-vessels, as in Fig. 12. 



Even at this juncture, if nutrition becomes again abundant, a 

 complete change takes place in the action or plans of those granules. 

 In that case they seem at once to return to the nucleus they were 

 leaving or had left. They surround that nucleus on every side, 

 and, when logwood staining is used, we find that, although that 

 nucleus (where it can be seen) is stained as intensely as the neigh- 

 bouring nuclei, yet the clustering granules stain so intensely purple 

 as completely to hide the nucleus from view, as shown in Figs. 5 and 

 14. Then comes another consideration : the granular cells staining 

 intensely by logwood come to be seen not only near vessels where 

 no fat-cells had ever existed, but also far away even from vessels, in 

 the centre of non- vascular tracts, which they could only have reached 



