20 THE MICROSCOPE. 
ABSTRACTS. 
CHANGES IN THE ARTERIES OF CONSUMPTIVES. 
R. N. C. IPPA (Vratch. t. IX, No. 20), after reviewing the 
literature of the subject and stating the methods of his 
experimentation, arrives at the following conclusions: 
1. The arteries have appeared changed by processes entirely 
similar with chronic fibrous endartritis. 
2. Connective tissue has appeared in the intima of such 
vessels which do not contain it normally, as the axillary, radial, ulnar, 
femoral, popliteal, anterior tibial, temporal and coronary of the 
heart. 
3. In those arteries, the intima of which normally contain a 
layer of connnective tissue (as the arch of the aorta, common and 
internal iliac until the origin of the umbilical artery, but which 
connective tissue only appears in extra-uterine life—Prof. RK. 
Thoma, Virchow’s Arch. t. XCIII), there is present in the con- 
sumptive a strong development of this layer. 
4, The most pronounced changes have been met with in the 
coronary arteries (playing such a great role) in the intima of which 
the connective tissue sometimes occupied the whole field of the 
microscope. 
5. The most insignificant changes have been found in the 
axillary artery, in the arch of the aorta and the femoral. 
6. No changes have taken place in the basilar and pulmonary 
arteries. 
7. In the media, atrophy of the muscular fibers has been 
found with the formation of connective tissue in places correspond- 
ing with the alterations of the intima. These two processes go 
hand in hand. 
Tn conclusion, the writer says: ‘“‘ Whether these changes are the 
causes predisposing to consumption (as in inherited cases of the 
disease), or are its consequence, remains, as yet, a question, to 
decide which requires the investigation, caeteris paribus, of arteries: 
1st, in persons dead from other diseases than consumption, but also 
by exhausting processes; and 2nd, in the persons with so-called 
habitus phthisicus (from consumptive families) dead from some 
other inter-current disease before becoming affected with consump- 
tion. —Cleveland Medical Gazette. 
