358 LECTURE XV. 



has perished, it is of course impossible for any further 

 development to originate in it. 



This latter category, where the cells are destroyed 

 during the course of the process, I proposed a few years 

 ago to designate by a term which has been employed to 

 express disease generally by K. H. Schultz. viz., Necro- 

 biosis* For we have, namely, always here to deal with 

 a gradual decay and death, a dissolution, we might almost 

 say, a necrosis. But the idea of necrosis really does not 

 offer any analogy to these processes, inasmuch as in ne- 

 crosis we conceive the mortified part to be preserved 

 more or less in its external form. Here on the contrary 

 the part vanishes, so that we can no longer perceive it 

 in its previous form. We have no necrosed fragment at 

 the end of the process, no mortification of the ordinary 

 kind, but a mass in which absolutely nothing of the pre- 

 viously existing tissues is preserved. The necrobiotic pro- 

 cesses, which must be completely separated from necrosis, 

 are in general attended by softening as their ultimate re- 

 sult. This commences with a friability of the parts ; they 

 lose their coherence, at last really liquefy, and more or less 

 moveable, pulpy or fluid products take their place. We 

 might therefore without more ado name this whole series 

 of necrobiotic processes softenings, if a number of them 

 did not run their course, without the malacia's ever be- 

 coming apparent to the naked eye. As soon, namely, 

 as a process of this sort sets in in a compound organ, as 

 for example, a muscle, a palpable myo-malacia is cer- 

 tainly produced when all the muscular . elements at a 

 given point are at once affected ; but it happens far more 

 frequently that, in the course of a muscle, only a compa- 

 ratively small number of primitive fasciculi are affected, 



* Necrobiosis is death brought on by (altered) life a spontaneous wearing out 

 of living parts the destruction and annihilation consequent upon life natural as 

 opposed to violent death (mortification.) From a MS. Note by the Author. 



