194 PROGBESS OF MICEOSCOPIOAL SCIENCE. 



lymphatics appear to arise in a delicate adenoid tissue enclosing the 

 smaller arteries, partly from a plexus and partly from lymph cavities, 

 the walls of which are formed of endothelial cells alone. The trabe- 

 cular system of lymphatics arises in a plexus lying between the 

 muscle-cell fasciculi. Kyber insists that a distinction must be made 

 between the splenic pulp and the adenoid tissue surrounding the 

 arteries, and points out the diflference both microscopically and 

 pathologically. The latter he regards as performing the usual func- 

 tions of the lymphatic system ; whilst the former, he conceives, may 

 exercise that digestive action on the albuminates of the spleen which 

 Schiff has demonstrated takes place. 



Tlie Microscopy of the Delhi Sores. — On this subject the address 

 given by Dr. Parkes to the British Medical Association is of 

 interest to the histologist.* He says, that in a class by itself, 

 for the recognized cause of the disease cannot at present be referred 

 to any plant, though it resembles perhaps no common animal cell, 

 must be placed the small cell which, by its extraordinary powers 

 of growth and attraction of food, causes the painful and obstinate 

 sores known in India and Syria by so many names. The Delhi or 

 Damascus sore, the Aleppo evil, and other names have been applied 

 to a disease which is spread all over the East, affecting men and dogs, 

 and which, though not fatal, is yet in the highest degree harassing 

 and discomfiting. The discovery of the cause and its cure we owe to 

 Dr. Fleming, of the Ai-my Medical Service, and it is a good instance 

 of the great use of the microscope in the hands of a competent man. 

 Dr. Fleming found as a constant element in these rodent ulcers a 

 small cell : its nature is quite doubtful ; no kind of plant can be 

 develoj)ed from it, and it is presumably of animal origin ; it contains 

 nuclei, and grows marvellously fast, though whether by cleavage or 

 budding or exosmotic transit, so to speak, of small cells through its 

 wall, has not been made out. By pressing on and absorbing the 

 nutrition of the skin, it soon destroys portions of the surface, and 

 forms most unsightly and painful ulcers. That this cell is the cause 

 has been proved by repeated inoculations. It is very tenacious of life 

 and resistant to chemical agents, hence the uselessness of the common 

 plans of local treatment which have been so repeatedly tried without 

 effect. The only cure is at once to destroy the cells with potassa 

 fusa. In a few days a sore which has been open and extending for 

 months is cured as by magic. The cure is infallible, and if this plan 

 of Dr. Fleming is carried out, he will have the merit of having at 

 once obliterated a disease which has been a plague for hundreds of 

 years, and neither spared the great Aurungzcbe in his hall of paradise 

 nor the meanest pariah who was no more than useless dust beneath 

 his feet. 



Russian Microscopic Specimens. — We learn from the ' British 

 Medical Journal,' that at a recent meeting of the Medico-Chirurgical 

 Society of Edinburgh (June 18), Dr. Matthews Duncan gave a short 

 account of some beautiful microscopic specimens kindly brought to 



* ' Medical Timca,' Aug. 9. 



