LECTURE XVII. 



appearance of parts. We find it has been employed for 

 centuries, and even in recent times tumours have been 

 termed lardaceous. Still the term, lardaceous changes, 

 as now used, has but very little to do with these tu- 

 mours, and rather refers to things, upon which the old 

 writers, who, I think, were better connoisseurs in bacon 

 than our friends in Yienna, would hardly have bestowed 

 such a name. The appearance of such organs, namely, 

 as in accordance with Viennese ideas, are said to look 

 like bacon, bears, according to northern notions, a much 

 greater resemblance to wax, and I have therefore now 

 for a long time, like the Edinburgh school, made use of 

 the term waxy change instead. When we look at a 

 liver or lymphatic gland which constitutes a well- 

 marked specimen of this condition, what strikes the 

 naked eye most, is the translucent, but at the same time, 

 dull appearance which the cut-surfaces exhibit ; the 

 natural colour of the parts is also more or less lost, so 

 that a material, at first more of a grey tint, but after- 

 wards perfectly colourless, seems to fill the parts. The 

 translucent nature of the tissue allows, however, the red 

 of the vessels and the natural hue of the neighbouring 

 parts to glimmer through, so that the altered spots in 

 different organs have rather a yellowish, reddish, or 

 brownish tinge ; but this is not a colour belonging to the 

 substance deposited. 



The first facts, by the help of which we were enabled 

 to determine more accurately the nature of this sub- 

 stance which had previously been taken, sometimes for 

 a peculiar fatty matter, sometimes for albumen or 

 fibrine, sometimes, finally, for a colloid substance, were 

 furnished by the application of iodine to animal tissues. 

 It will now soon be five years since I first discovered the 

 peculiar reaction of the corpora amylacea found in 

 the nervous centres with iodine, which I have already 



