THE HORSE. 191 



In the above we have two serious errors : 



1. There are no such things as specific cells. 



2. The complications of the connective-tissue, stroma, of the 

 organs, in which proliferation takes place, is essentially peculiar to 

 glanders — that is, in the general manner in which it occurs, though 

 the process itself has nothing specific in it, and may and does 

 occur under other conditions. The irritans, the infectious prin- 

 ciple of glanders, is the specific element ; and also, we can say, the 

 general manner in which the interstitial tissues of the equine or- 

 ganism are complicated, is also something peculiar to the disease. 

 Gerlach contradicts himself when he calls these round and spindle 

 cells " glanders-cells," especially the former, and says they con- 

 stitute the " specific and true basis of the disease" In another 

 place he tells us, " they originate from the cells of the connective tis- 

 sue and epithelial elements." 



Were they specific to glanders, they should be peculiar to it, and 

 not occur in anything else. 



This is not so : they are the simple pi^oducts of inflammation. 

 Just such cells may be found in simple but severe ulcerations of the 

 nasal mucosae, from wounds, chemical irritants, or such like. We 

 can produce them at pleasure. 



Specific cells are a physiological impossibility, so far as abnor- 

 mality is concerned. 



They may be heterotopic, that is, produced at a place where they 

 do not belong ; as an epithelial production in the brain, or in the 

 uterus, or a bone ; then we call it cancer. 



Or the singular phenomenon of an embryonal tooth in the pa- 

 rotid region, which is sometimes met with in the horse. 



Neither the cells nor the teeth having anything peculiar in them- 

 selves, they are normal elements in a wrong place. 



Cells may be heterochronic — that is, normal cells may be pro- 

 duced at an abnormal time. 



In Fig. 2 of Gerlach's illustration of glanders-cell, he give as 

 first-class picture of the gelatinous connective tissue of the embry- 

 onal umbilical cord ; a specimen, by-the-way, which offers the very 

 best opportunity of studying the appearance and connections of 

 spindle-cells. 



Glanders-cells, cancer-cells, tubercle-cells, are all without any spe- 

 cificity. It is not the cell alone which makes the cancer ; it is the 

 seat, and the peculiar anatomical arrangements, with its physiologi- 

 cal characteristics, which constitute the specificity of that malignant 

 neoplasm. 



