1896.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 243 



Often the abundance is so great and the deposition so 

 quick that the lung gravels are found in fine granules. 

 Sometimes in broken massive crystals. Sometimes so 

 large as when voided they have been mistaken for a 

 necrosed rib! The granular forms are taken in by the 

 mucous corpuscles which thereby are distended into 

 giant cells, and thus more readily are expectorated than 

 the unencysted granules which catch in the walls of the 

 respiratory tract. This shows nature's beneficence to aid 

 the expulsion of lung gravels. These gravels throw light 

 on the DIAGNOSIS of asthma. If the physical im- 

 pinging of a cambric needle on tlie back of one's hand 

 twenty times a minute for days, weeks, months and 

 years would be deemed sufficient for oversensitive nerves 

 (hypersBsthesia), with spasm and irritabilty of muscles 

 near point of contact, why should not the sputal acicular 

 crystals, whose points are sharper than the finest cambric 

 needle as the latter is sharper than a crow bar — -imping- 

 ing at every breath on the circular muscular fibers of 

 the bronchial tubes, cause spasms and contraction, im- 

 peding the breath as is the case in asthma? For one I 

 can reply, that I have had a case of asthma of 26 years 

 standing, cured when these gravels were removed and 

 not before. 



2. Hay fever sputa show the same gravels and is an 

 festival form of asthma (Salisbury). 



3. The fallacy of asthma cures by change of climate. 

 The man whence the crystal in Fig. 1. came, was an 



old patient of mine who went to Colorado to live on ac- 

 count of asthma. While there he had no asthma. Re- 

 turning to New York his asthma returned. In other 

 words something in Colorado enabled him to hear his 

 load of gravel without an explosion. Or to use another 

 simile, he was loaded like a gun, ready to go off, but in 

 Colorado the trigger was not pulled! It is wonderful 

 how the system tolerates foreign bodies. But there is 



