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ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



The Practical Use of the Microscope. By J. Hepworth. 

 {Continued from Vol. IV, p. 111.) 



In making a post-mortem examination of a man about 

 63 years of age, who had labom-ed under gastric disease 

 for two or three years and was extremely emaciated and 

 dropsical, I found the stomach small, and containing about 

 an ounce of yellowish mucus ; there was no scirrhus, but the 

 rugae were thickened and more raised than natural, eccliy- 

 mosis had occurred in different parts of the inner lining, but 

 principally on the elevated ridges of the rugse ; the mucous 

 lining over two or three of these spots had given way, leaving 

 a smaU jagged ulcer. On examining one of these points I 

 found that the vessels retained their form (although quite 

 bare), except one or two, which had contracted and formed a 

 knob about the t^o^Ii^ of ^^ \\iQ^\ in diameter at the point of 

 rupture. There was a cicatrix, three quarters by five eighths 

 of an inch in diameter, in which the muscular coat was want- 

 ing, but the mucous covering appeared to have been repro- 

 duced. On examining the mucus, it did not contain Sarcina 

 ventriculi as I had anticipated, but some crystals of oxalate 

 of lime (which I never met with in the stomach before), 

 abundance of exudation corpuscles and what I conceive to be 

 a vegetation {vide fig. 1). The corpuscles appear to have 

 been the nidi of these formations, as I observed them in 

 different stages of progress, as though each granule of the 

 corpuscle supported a single cell, or plant ; these becoming 

 elongated, and so numerous as almost to hide the whole 

 of the corpuscle from view. 



The first appearance of any change in the corpuscle was 

 the unusual development of the contained granules, as if 

 they would start through the cell wall. They then assumed 

 a light green colour, and appeared in the next stage either 

 to have become farther protruded, or had a cell added 

 externally, which eventually became elongated into a semi- 

 ellipsis of a very acute angle. The centre of the mass was of 

 a brownish-olive colour; it had not a crystalline appear- 

 ance, but each cell was more like the hair of a plant, bein^ 

 single. 



On a superficial examination it appeared not unlike the 

 crystals of lactic acid, but these cells were very different to 



VOL. V. B 



