252 HALOIDS AND HALOID BASES. 



diagnosis of the disease, would be completely deceived as to its 

 character and the amount of danger. 



It appears scarcely necessary to remark that milk contains a 

 larger quantity of fat than any other animal fluid. An average of 

 2*9 of fat has been found in woman's milk. This subject we shall 

 however consider more fully in the second volume of this work, 

 when we purpose treating of the increase arid diminution of the 

 fat contained in the milk of different animals under different 

 physiological and pathological relations. 



Since Giiterbock's observations, attention has been directed to 

 the quantity of fat contained in pus, which has frequently been 

 found to amount to 5-g-. 



As we have already remaiked, the fat in the blood is mostly in 

 a state of saponificaticn ; but in many diseases, the blood has been 

 observed to contain large quantities of unsaponified fat. Since we 

 purpose entering more fully into this subject when we proceed to 

 the consideration of the morbid conditions of the blood, we will 

 here only observe, that although, as is generally supposed, the blood 

 of drunkards frequently presents large accumulations of free fat, this 

 only occurs where there is already some hepatic disease, as for 

 instance, granular liver, whether this be a mere secretion of colloid- 

 like exudation accompanied with decrease of size in the liver, or 

 that species of granular disease in which some of the hepatic 

 lobules present scattered cells infiltrated with fat. 



Pathological depositions of fat, either free or enclosed in cells, 

 occur most frequently in the liver, but also in the kidneys, the 

 spleen, in paralysed muscles, in the heart, and other organs, and 

 occasionally (enclosed in a capsule) in encysted tumours. This fatty 

 metamorphosis (as it is termed) of some of the organs, will be spe- 

 cially considered in the third volume of this work, in our remarks 

 on the individual tissues and organs. It will be sufficient at present 

 to remark that these so-called fatty degenerations of organs occur 

 either without any previous exudation, by the direct deposition of 

 fat in the tissues, the cells, or the areolar tissue, or, (as indeed is 

 more frequently the case,) after resorption of the physiological 

 or pathological tissues or exudations, are deposited in their place. 

 The latter case occurs in paralysis of muscles, where they have 

 undergone fatty degeneration, and in osteoporosis and osteomalacia, 

 where the bones, rendered porous by the resorption of their mineral 

 and organic parts, are found, as it were, swimming in fat ; a similar 

 process may occur in the fatty degeneration of the spleen and the 

 kidneys, which many have attempted to explain as the third stage, 



