MEDICAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 311 



peared ; but mounting in one third per cent, of corrosive sublimate 

 prevented this. 



Mr. Schafer had given up carmine because of its too brilliant 

 colour, and always used logwood, which he found selective in pro- 

 perty. He thought osmic acid better than picric carmine for 

 nerve-tissues, and remarked that Dr. Sharpey had long ago used 

 magenta for staining the axis cylinders of nerves. 



Mr. Miller had found a solution of carmine and a 1 per cent, 

 solution of picric acid in alcohol and water especially good for 

 pplenic and unstriped muscular fibres. He preferred carmine to 

 logwood. 



Mr. Groves, except in the case of nerve-structures, preferred 

 logwood to carmine. The double staining of logwood and gold 

 chloride was good for nerves and nuclei, and especially for such 

 structures as frog's bladder. 



Mr. Grolding Bird mentioned Dr. Moxon's use of Stevens's 

 writing fluid for staining nerve-structures, and mentioned a fact 

 communicated to him by Dr. Malassez, of Paris, that aniline dis- 

 solved in spirit was especially good for studying ossification of 

 cartilage ; for it stained the cartilage but not the newly formed 

 bone, while an aqueous solution of aniline stained the caualiculi 

 and not the bone substance, but was not permanent like the 

 alcoholic solution. 



The President, in proposing a vote of thanks to the authors of 

 the papers, which was duly accorded, remarked that more in- 

 vestigation was required on the subject of staining fluids, and 

 recommended it as an object of special study that would certainly 

 be productive of useful results. 



Miliary Sclerosis. — Mr. W. B. Kesteven read a paper 

 upon a form of grey degeneration occurring in the brain and 

 spinal cord, and designated by Drs. Batty Tuke and Rutherford, 

 *' miliary scIerOsia." The author showed examples of this lesion 

 by sections and drawings. The change is associated with a wide 

 range of diseases of the nervous centres. He enumerated as 

 many as twenty morbid conditions in which he had met with the 

 so-called miliary sclerosis. The essential characters of this lesion 

 Mr. Kesteven showed to consist in the absence, in circumscribed 

 patches, of the normal nerve-tissue, and its replacement by an 

 altered and degenerate state of the neuroglia. The spots vary in 

 size from ^oth in. to j^o^^ ^^- ^^ diameter. Their physical cha- 

 racters were described in detail, and the author then proceeds to 

 discuss the question of how this character was connected with 

 previous symptoms, and whether it is possible that they could be 

 the result of mere post-mortem changes. These questions, he 

 submitted, were as yet unanswered. Judging from the great 

 diversity of pathological conditions in which this degeneration is 

 met with, he deemed the solution of the problem impossible, with 

 our present amount of knowledge in neuro-pathology. 



Dr. Payne asked whether Mr. Kesteven had found miliary 



