2 44 CHANGES IN INFLAMMA TION. 



been growing very rapidly returns to or reassumes its normal 

 condition, the access of pabulum becomes more restricted 

 than it was when growth was too free during the abnormal 

 state. 



From these observations it follows that disease may 

 result in two ways either from the bioplasts of an organ 

 growing and multiplying faster than in the normal state, or 

 from their doing so more slowly. In the one case, the 

 normal restrictions under which growth takes place are di- 

 minished; in the other, the restrictions are greatly increased. 

 Pneumonia, or inflammation of the lung, may be adduced as 

 a striking example of the first condition, for in this disease 

 millions of minute masses of bioplasm which have escaped 

 from the blood suspended in liquor sanguinis (exudation) 

 grow and multiply very rapidly in the air-cells of the lung, 

 and nutrient constituents are diverted from other parts of 

 the body to this focus of morbid activity. Contraction and 

 condensation of the liver, kidney, and other glands, hardening, 

 shrinking, and wasting of the muscular, nervous, and other 

 tissues, are good examples of the second. The activity of 

 change becomes lessened as the morbid state advances. 

 The whole organ wastes, the secreting structure shrinks, 

 and at last, inactive connective tissue alone marks the seat 

 where most active and energetic vital changes once 

 occurred. 



It will have been noticed how simply the nature of the 

 changes occurring in cells in inflammation, fever, and other 

 morbid changes, may be explained, if we describe what we 

 observe, and give up such artificial terms, as cell-wall, cell- 

 contents, nucleus. In all acute internal inflammations and in 

 fevers a much larger quantity of inanimate pabulum is taken 



