FAKKE'S OSCILLATOKIA. 265 



days ago, after suffering considerable griping pains in the bowels, which 

 continued for twelve hours, she passed per anum a number of shreds, 

 which being discharged with some difficulty, and causing an obstruction of 

 the bowel, her attention was thereby more particularly attracted, and 

 some of the shreds were pulled away by herself, so that there can be no 

 question as to the source whence they were derived. 



" The substances thus passed were placed in water, and brought by the 

 patient for my inspection. They had so much the appearance and ordi- 

 nary characters of shreds of lymph, or false membrane, that I had not at 

 that time the slightest suspicion of their being anything else, and merely 

 reserved them for a more particular examination at some future period, 

 but without any expectation that they would present appearances different 

 from the ordinary microscopic characters of false membrane. I was there- 

 fore much surprised, on placing a small portion of the substance under 

 the microscope, to find that it presented the appearance of a mass of 

 Conferva, and that, in fact, the entire substance was made up of nothing 

 else but tangled filaments of a confervoid type. However, before de- 

 scribing the microscopic characters of this singular substance, it will be 

 necessary to give some idea of the appearance of the mass, as examined 

 without the aid of the microscope. I have already compared the sub- 

 stances to shreds of lymph or false membrane ; such shreds or flakes of 

 soft yellow matter, assuming a membranous form, are familiar to every one 

 accustomed to pathological researches. It is well known that they are 

 often the result .of inflammation attacking membranous surfaces, and that 

 they are most frequently met with on the serous membranes, as the 

 pleura, pericardium, and peritoneum, but that they are also occasionally, 

 though more rarely, produced from mucous surfaces, as those which line 

 the air-passages and alimentary canal. Of the same nature as these have 

 been also generally considered those fibrinous flakes which are occasionally 

 passed from the intestines in chronic affections of the mucous membrane 

 of those parts, and which sometimes assume the form of tubular casts 

 evidently moulded upon the surface of the gut ; and lastly, I may allude 

 to a more common affection of another mucous surface, the lining mem- 

 brane of the uterus, on which membranous substances are occasionally 

 formed and discharged, constituting a complete cast of the organ, and 

 familiar to every practitioner as occurring occasionally in cases of dys- 

 menorrhcea. 



" I allude to these examples (familiar enough to medical men) for the 

 purpose of showing to those who have not directed their attention to such 

 subjects, that membranous or fibrinous substances are occasionally dis- 

 charged from the various mucous surfaces of the body, which are gene- 

 rally considered to be the product, of inflammation, either acute or chronic, 

 and are closely allied in composition and ordinary characters to the fibri- 

 nous part of the blood, from which fluid they are apparently separated by 

 the inflammatory process. With such knowledge therefore we should, 

 I think, be but little prepared to find that flakes or shreds of a membranous 

 substance having so much of the ordinary appearance of the substances 

 which I have just described, that several medical friends to whom I have 

 shown them, have at once supposed them to be the ordinary flakes of 

 false membrane discharged from the bowels should, when microscopically 

 examined, present all the characters of those confervoid masses which are 



