42 PHYSIC 



backward movement being prevented by the nodes of 

 Ranvier, the arrested circulating material, if not moved 

 forward, must collect and balloon the lumina of the neural 

 channels involved, and hence cause such pathological 

 phenomena as neuroma, which we have elsewhere con- 

 tended is due to arrest, accumulation, inspissation, and 

 pseudo-organisation of the white substance of Schwann. 

 While we thus claim stasis of neural circulation as one 

 of its specific series of vascular channels, arrest of the 

 forward and backward movement of the substance known 

 by the above name, with accompanying inspissation, sub- 

 organisation, and localisation of the accumulating mass as 

 a type of cystic tumour of neural origin, we would claim 

 that the operation of kindred circulatory conditions, 

 material and dynamic, and the action of like pathological 

 factors, must result in the evolution of kindred morbid 

 states, organic and functional. The phenomena, physio- 

 logical and pathological, due to vascular circulatory stasis 

 must depend in character to a very great extent on whether 

 the arrested material is potentially formative and nutritive, 

 or has lost its nutritive components and qualities and is on 

 the downgrade of vital change, or become actually effete ; 

 thus the character of the tumour or new growth, and the 

 physiologico-pathological regime set up by the circula- 

 tory stasis will necessarily be determined by the amount 

 of vital change already undergone by the arrested material, 

 and the nature of the histological elements amid which the 

 arrest has taken place, as to whether they formatively lend 

 themselves, so to speak, to further vital change, physio- 

 logical or pathological, or at once break down from material 

 inability or dynamic exhaustion, and cease further to main- 

 tain the continuity of vital change. Circulatory stasis may 

 be complete or partial, and, therefore, may lead to very 

 different pathological results, ranging from complete de- 

 struction and disappearance, or wholesale accumulation of 

 the circulatory materials, and their formative re-arrange- 

 ment amid the surrounding tissue elements, to the slightest 

 mechanical interference with the process of organic change 

 and functional activity or vital capacity : it may also be 

 local or general, and produce effects from the most minute 

 and transitory to the most general and persistent. Cir- 



