Basil C. H. Harvey 221 
sequently appear relatively more numerous in areas of degeneration than 
in the healthy mucous membrane. This relative stability of the parietal 
cells and their resistance to destructive influences has been noted in 
the human subject by many observers. Béckelman, 02, Hammarschlag, 
Koreynsky and Jaworsky, 02, and Bouveret, 93, mention it in gastric 
ulcer. Popoff, 97, states that it is every evident in inflammatory con- 
ditions of the gastric mucous membrane in the dog. Their stability 
was very evident in my preparations, as parts of the two or three degen- 
erating glands were composed almost exclusively of parietal cells, all 
the other glandular elements having degenerated and disappeared. Many 
of the parietal cells remaining retained a full and definite outline and ap- 
peared little affected by degeneration. Many others of them, however, 
lost their regularity of outline, becoming oblong, square, or pyriform 
in sections and presenting changes in both the nucleus and cytoplasm. 
The former, while partaking sometimes in the irregularity of the cell 
outline, are usually spherical, being pale and swollen and containing 
two or three small masses of chromatin. Occasionally the karyoplasm 
takes a diffuse and homogeneous nuclear stain, showing that the nucleus 
is undergoing degeneration by karyolysis. In nearly all of them, how- 
ever, the nuclei degenerate by karyorhexis, although the pyknotic stage 
which is described by Schmaus and Albrecht, 95, as developing at the 
termination of this process and in which the chromatic material is 
massed into a ball, does not appear. The earlier stages, however, were 
common in which the chromatin disappears from the interior of the 
nucleus and hes upon the nuclear membrane, which later becomes broken 
down and the nuclear material distributed throughout the cell. The 
cytoplasm commences to degenerate earlier than the nuclei. It becomes 
reduced in amount and its granules become fewer and paler. Commonly 
a circular area appears about the nucleus, from which the granules have 
either disappeared completely or become unstainable. This area appears 
absolutely empty and often it extends throughout the whole of the 
cytoplasmic part of the cell. 
A feature of these degenerative processes is the resistance of the 
nuclei. Although this appears sometimes in the chief cells it is much 
more marked in the parietal cells, where the nucleus usually persists 
pale and swollen, but entire, after most of the cytoplasm has disappeared. 
They often form masses in which the individual nuclei are separated 
by only a very little cytoplasm which, retaining its distinctive character, 
determines the nature of the cell. This same nuclear stability is reported 
in the parietal cells of the human stomach in cases of ulcer, where 
Bockelman, 02, found that sometimes the cytoplasm had so completely 
