MEMOIRS. 
On Myetiris, beng an EXPERIMENTAL INQuiry into the 
PaTrHOLoGicaL APPEARANCES of the same. By D. J. 
Hamiztton, Author of the “‘ Astley Cooper Prize Essay ” 
on “ Diseases and Injuries of the Spinal Cord.” (With 
Plate XVI.)! 
So much doubt still exists as to what are the characteristic 
pathological appearances of inflammation of the spinal cord, 
and so many diverse conditions have been described as such 
which no doubt owed their origin to entirely different patho- 
logical processes, that, as yet, we may be said to possess no 
literature which can form a guide in telling us whether this 
or that condition is an inflammatory affection, and which 
clearly differentiates this from the many other pathological 
changes to which the spinal cord and all nervous tissues are 
liable. 
Softening, hardening, disintegration, and numerous other 
states of the organ have all been proposed as characteristic of 
its inflammation without any attempt to describe the stages 
or means by which these so-called pathological lesions have 
been brought about. One great source of fallacy in regard 
to the proper understanding of this matter is the inability to 
distinguish between the lesions known as “ secondary de- 
generations’ produced by failure of the trophic or nutritive 
nervous action exerted by the nerve-cells on the fibres to 
which they are attached, and those which are localised to a 
certain spot, and which are probably dependent on some dis- 
tinct origo malt in their neighbourhood. For, granted that 
we have degeneration of a few nerve-cells in portions of the 
cerebrum, it is almost a certainty that if the subject of the 
lesion has lived long enough, the fibres in the spinal cord in 
communication with these will have also degenerated, will 
have undergone fatty disintegration, and will be softened. 
How easy, then, in such acase to mistake this for a local 
affection, instead of referring it to its true source, namely, 
the primary degeneration of the cerebral nerve-cells. 
' Read at the Medical Microscopical Society, May 21st, 1875. 
VOL. XV.— NEW SER. Z 
