130 ; THE MICROSCOPE. 
Many authors, especially French, were of the opinion that this 
pigment was derived from the blood as the result of the destruction 
of the red blood corpuscles, the coloring matter of the blood (Hemo- 
globin) being transformed into this black pigment. 
These views were accepted until it was proven by chemical 
tests that this black lung-pigment was identical with coal-dust and 
soot. In 1878 Soyka narrated a case in the Prager Medicinischen 
Wochenschrift, in which he had observed that the black pigment in 
the spleen, liver and kidneys was identical with coal pigment; this 
being the first case cited in literature of which we have any 
knowledge. 
Soyka’s case was a man, 70 years old, afflicted with a high grade 
of pneumono-coneosis, resp. anthracosis of the lungs, in which he also 
found coal pigment in the liver, spleen and kidneys. Soyka believed 
that coal dust (pigment) passed through the bronchial lymphatic 
glands, then through the thoracic duct, and from there was carried 
into the blood and deposited in the above named organs. This hypo- 
thesis Weigert was right in disputing, with the remark that if the 
lymphatic glands were not continent, every grown person would have 
such deposits in different organs, which is positively not the case; 
every grown person, however, possesses more or less anthracotic- 
bronchial-lymphatic glands; that this black pigmentation is certainly 
not an expression of malarial-dyscrasia, which is proven by the statis- 
tics; that in Germany the malarial forms from which melanzmia is 
produced, rarely: ever occurs, although a deposit of black matter in 
the liver and spleen is by no means infrequent, as Weigert and Roth 
have recently affirmed. 
The latter author also expressed his views in a lecture published 
in the Correspondenz-Blatt fiir die Schweiz. Aerzte, Jahrgang XIV, 
1884, to the effect that this pigmentation (pigment) is probably 
carried by the blood, and is of the opinion that this ought to be 
looked upon as a coal-dust-metastases. Weigert expresses the same 
opinion in the Fortschritte der Medicin, No. 14, 1883, in which he 
explains in a simple and forcible manner the diffusion of coal-dust 
and soot through the blood-vessels, and states that in Leipzig (Ger- 
many), the home of the observer, severe malarial cases never occur, 
and that therefore, for this reason, and also because the spleens 
examined are often completely atrophied, the origin of melanzmia 
(melanosis) should be excluded. 
In my mind there is no doubt that the black pigment, which is 
frequently observed in these organs, presents no material difference 
pee 
