‘PRUSSIC ACID ON THE ANIMAL ECONOMY. 233 
substances discovered in the animal tissue, and about which 
so much has been written during late years. That the so- 
called corpora amylacea, or starch-grains, found in different 
organs of the human subject, and referable to some morbid 
condition of the blood, may take their origin from some 
similar chemical changes as those to which I have drawn 
attention, and that perhaps in many instances these have 
only been formed at the time of death, and are referable to 
post-mortem change, except in such cases as resemble the one 
of epilepsy recorded in the ‘ Mic, Journ.’ of 1855, by Mr. 
Stratford, of Toronto. 
19. If we refer to the history of these corpora amylacea, 
we find that they have been gradually associated with 
amyloid degeneration of the tissues, a condition which is 
regarded by Virchow as essentially different,* as the tissue 
becomes directly filled with a substance of an amyloid 
nature, possessing, however, the peculiarity of never be- 
coming blue under the action of iodine alone, and only by a 
subsequent application of sulphuric acid, and, therefore, ap- 
pearing to be more allied to cellulose; and this deposit, he 
supposes, is conveyed to the part from without, as he has 
been unable to discover any change in the blood from which 
the inference might be drawn that this was really the source 
of the deposits. But what he states further on goes to show 
that the disease in the lymphatic glands consists in a thicken- 
ing and narrowing of the arteries, and in the conversion of 
the small cells of the follicles into corpora amylacea, thus 
linking together these bodies and amyloid deposits, and 
tending rather to lead us to regard their origin as traceable 
to the blood. 
20. I think the facts which I have brought forward, show- 
ing the formation of corpora amylacea in organic fluids, both 
while in and out of the body, due to the action of prussic 
acid, tend rather to the view that the blood directly supplies 
the material from whence these starchy bodies are formed, 
and points out to us that a chemical change has been brought 
about in it. I am, therefore, inclined to the opinion that 
some change in the blood, analogous to that produced by 
prussic acid, is the most likely explanation of the mode by 
which these bodies are formed in the animal economy, and 
that we shall probably find other substances beside cyanogen 
possess the property of eliminating starch-grains in the blood 
of animals, and that amyloid deposits are only a further step 
of the same process. 
21. From whatever point of view we look at these facts, it 
* Virchow’s ‘Cellular Pathology,’ p. 371, &c. 
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