110 PROGBESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



subject. He says that Lubimoff's paper, published in Virchow's 

 'Archiv,' vol. Ivii., 1873, is founded on fourteen carefully reported 

 cases of general paralysis, which presented themselves in Meynert's 

 ' Psychiatric Clinique.' The full history of each case is given, along 

 with the post mortem appearances, naked eye and microscopic. Thin 

 sections were made from specimens hardened in a 2 per cent, solution 

 of bichromate of potass ; they were coloured with carmine, and set up 

 in gum Damar. The cortical substance of the frontal lobes was 

 usually examined, and in some cases that of the parietal, occipital, and 

 insular lobes, the cornu Ammonis, and other portions of the ence- 

 phalon. Lubimoff reports one case in which a sort of cicatrix, or 

 wedge-shaped induration, was found on the right hemisphere of the 

 cerebellum, implicating two lobules which were glued together by a 

 substance which unmistakably consisted of connective tissue. The 

 molecular and nucleated layers were thinned, and Purkinje's cells 

 almost obliterated. For the normal structure a dense " felt-like " 

 substance was substituted, in which nuclei were imbedded, and which 

 was intimately connected with the walls of the blood-vessels. Around 

 it the undestroyed cells of Purkinje appeared j^lainly sclerosed. 

 Lubimoff supports Meynert's obsei'vations as to the intimate relations 

 of brain lesions with hypertemia, that they never occur apart from it, 

 and may be regarded as a consequence. In some cases the vessels 

 showed indications of obstruction during life by means of thrombi, 

 due to metamorphosis of blood-corpuscles into molecular masses, with 

 here and there distensions filled with cori^uscles, and in extreme cases 

 actual rupture of the vascular walls and diffusion of the periphery 

 (^Zerstreuung im Umkreis) in the parenchyma of the organ. There were 

 also found, in all the foiirteen cases, on and aroimd the vascular walls, 

 pigment deposits of various sizes, and sometimes of very considerable 

 extent, which are taken to be evidences of previously existing con- 

 gestions. Apart from these consequences of hyperaemia, the walls of 

 the vessels presented themselves altered and thickened ; their norm al 

 coats and muscular strife being destroyed, and the thickened walls 

 appearing to consist of a homogeneous mass, waxy in appearance. On 

 this Lubimoff bases his term of " waxy degeneration " of the vascular 

 walls. The nuclei, esj)ecially at the bifurcations, ajjpeared proliferated. 

 Lubimoff cannot determine whether in general paralysis the vessels 

 thicken themselves by an absolutely new growth. 



The special characteristic of paralytic dementia presents itself in 

 the changes of the nuclei of the neuroglia, which show themselves in 

 the brains of such subjects wonderfully increased in quantity, to a 

 degree which, according to Lubimoff, must be accepted as a patho- 

 logical product, as preparations of healthy brains and of those taken 

 from the subjects of other neuroses (e. g. extreme melancholy and 

 mania), show but a slight amount of neuroglia corpuscles in the cortical 

 substance. (In the opinion of Boll, who has inspected Lubimoff's 

 preparations, this observation is of the highest pathological value). 



Wliat Lubimoff describes as nuclei of neui'oglia are very fine 

 Deiters' cells, which are well known thi'ough the works of Golgi, 



