FATS. 263 



sideration of the fatness and leanness of men and animals, under 

 different physiological or pathological relations ; but such a method 

 of observation is too vague and general any longer to maintain its 

 ground in the present position of science. We have ceased to believe 

 in the existence of a special administrator of the economy of the 

 living organism, who, under the title of vital force, prepares, in times 

 of plenty, for a season' of scarcity ; and we now know that the 

 process of the deposition of fat in the areolar tissue is not so simple, 

 and that its resorption does not admit of so ready a solution as was, 

 at one time, believed to be the case. Thus, it must not be supposed 

 that fat simply collects in the interstices of the cellular tissue, from 

 which it may be as easily removed as the water which occasionally 

 accumulates therein in hy drops anasarca. Fat is not contained in 

 a free state within the interstices of the areolar tissue, but is 

 contained in special cells, enclosed by an albuminous wall., and 

 provided originally with a nucleus, the so-called cytoblast. Fat, 

 therefore, only collects in the cellular tissue by means of a cell- 

 formation, and hence it is, in many cases, extremely difficult to 

 explain how fat can so rapidly disappear from the areolar tissue. 

 It has not even been clearly determined whether the whole cell is 

 resorbed with the fat, or whether, as Gurlt* maintains, the cell 

 remains, and is filled with serum instead of fat. We must remember, 

 in considering the observations made on the increase or diminution 

 of fat in men and animals in a healthy as well as a diseased con- 

 dition, that fat-cells, like most other animal cells, stand in a con- 

 stantly alternating relation to the other fluids, more especially the 

 blood. The constitution of the blood is reflected in all parts of 

 the animal body, and endosmotic and counter currents must be 

 established as soon as one of the fluids in question is subjected to any 

 alteration. It is not necessary that we should assume with Mascagni 

 that each fat-cell is provided with an artery and a vein, for the relations 

 of endosmosis with which we are at present acquainted sufficiently 

 explain the different results of this mutual action between the 

 nutrient fluid and the fat- cell. In rapid emaciation, and more 

 particularly in those conditions of the body which are usually 

 termed anaemic, (as, for instance, after repeated blood-letting and 

 other losses of the animal fluids, and after typhus and other severe 

 diseases,) fat is often accumulated in the blood, while it disappears 

 from the sub-cutaneous cellular tissue. Conversely, the formation 

 of fat- cells often appears to be more rapid than the reproduction of 

 other tissues after anaemic conditions, when the blood has not 



* Physiol. S. 20. 



