508 LECTURE XX. 



division of the cells show themselves in nearly all new- 

 formations, in the benignant as well as in the malignant, 

 in the hyperplastic as well as in the heteroplastic ones, 

 in the self-same manner. Unquestionably, however, this 

 similarity of nature is transitory ; it is not long before 

 some one characteristic feature displays itself in each in- 

 dividual structure, whereby we are enabled distinctly to 

 recognize its nature. 



With regard to this question of the criteria of new- 

 formations, no agreement in opinion has indeed even at 

 the present moment been come to, and here too there- 

 fore it is incumbent upon me now to show how I have 

 arrived at my views, which in many respects so widely 

 differ from those generally held, and for what reasons I 

 have deemed myself obliged to quit the beaten track. 



The names which have been bestowed upon individual 

 new-formations, have, as you know, often been based 

 pretty much upon accidental peculiarities, and not so very 

 unfrequently selected in quite an arbitrary manner. The 

 attempts to establish a regular nomenclature, which were 

 formerly made, were really only based upon the consis- 

 tence of tumours, reasons for classification having been 

 derived from the circumstance that the substance of new- 

 formations was found to be sometimes hard, at others 

 soft, fluid, pultaceous, gelatinous, etc., and thus meliceris, 

 atheromata, steatomata, scirrhi, etc., were separated from 

 one another. It is self-evident that the ideas which are 

 now attached to several of these things must be done 

 away with, if it be wished to understand the original 

 meaning of these designations. When the presence of 

 an atheromatous process is now-a-days spoken of, some- 

 thing is meant thereby of which the old observers were 

 far from having any idea. When the tumour anatomists 

 of the present day labour hard to revive the name stea- 

 toma and would have it designate a firm fatty tumour. 



