ATHEROMATOUS DEPOSITS IN ARTERIES. 



399 



FIG. 117. 



the close of this process, numerous plates of cholestea' 

 rine are seen, which display themselves even to the naked 

 eye as glistening lamellae ; large rhombic tablets, which 

 lie together in large numbers, side by side, or covering 

 one another, and altogether produce a glittering reflec- 

 tion. In addition to these plates, we find under the 

 microscope black-looking granule-globules, in which the 

 individual fat-granules are at first very minute. These 

 globules are often present in 

 very large quantity ; some of 

 them are seen, breaking up, 

 and falling to pieces, parti- 

 cles of them swimming about, 

 as in milk. Besides these 

 there are amorphous frag- 

 ments of tissue of larger or 

 smaller size which still cohere, 

 and are rather due to the soft- 

 ening of the rest of the sub- 

 stance of the tissue which has 



not undergone fatty degeneration ; and in them heaps 

 of granules are here and there imbedded. It is these 

 three constituents together, the cholestearine, the granule- 

 cells and fat-granules, and finally the large lumps of half- 

 softened substance, which give the atheromatous matter its 

 pultaceous character, and really produce a certain degree 

 of resemblance to the contents of a pultaceous [sebace- 

 ous, epidermic] cyst (Griitzbeutel) of the skin. With 

 regard to the cholestearine, it is by no means a specific 

 product, appertaining to this kind of fatty transforma- 



Fig. 117. The pultaceous atheromatous matter from a patch in the aorta, a a'. Fluid 

 fat, the product of the fatty metamorphosis of the cells of the internal coat (a), 

 which become transformed into granule-globules (a' a'), then disintegrate and set 

 free large and small drops of oil (fatty debris), b. Amorphous, granularly-wrinkled 

 flakes of tissue softened and swollen by imbibition, c, c'. Crystals of cholestea- 

 rine ; c large rhombic plates ; c, c' fine rhombic needles. 300 diameters. 



