INFLAMMATION. 361 



(B) Inflammation of Cartilage. After irritation of cartilage 

 tissue, the action which ensues depends upon the intensity and 

 depth of the injury, as well as upon the locality to which the 

 irritating agent was applied. In order to render the conditions 

 uniform in all experiments, I chose the articular cartilage of the 

 condyles of the femurs of chloroformed dogs, cats, and rabbits, 

 which I injured with a red-hot pointed piece of iron. 



Superficial Injuries in the Middle of the Condyle. Twenty-six 

 hours after the injury, I found the excavation produced by the 

 iron partly covered with an eschar, and the tissue in the neigh- 

 borhood of a grayish yellow color. A few cartilage cavities were 

 enlarged, and contained a finely granular, sometimes vacuoled, 

 mass. 



In specimens obtained on the fifth day of inflammation of the 

 articular cartilage, I found, close to the border of the injured 

 place, large cavities, in part open toward the surface, surpassing 

 in size the normal cartilage cavities sometimes by five diameters. 

 Between these enlarged cavities the basis-substance was reduced 

 to narrow septa. The cavities contained a pale granular sub- 

 stance, divided into fields and nucleated corpuscles. I was 

 unable to determine whether these had originated from a single 

 enlarged corpuscle, or by simple reduction of the basis- substance 

 between the original cartilage corpuscles. The latter view was 

 supported by the fact that sometimes several corpuscles were seen 

 occupying the larger cavities, surrounded by a narrowed basis- 

 substance. Close to the changed zone, around the injury, unaltered 

 cavities were observed, which held unchanged corpuscles. 



The appearances were the. same, after the inflammation had 

 lasted for eight days, in specimens taken from the knee-joint of 

 an old rabbit, in which, in consequence of the injury, suppura- 

 tion had occurred. The spindle-shape of some of the cartilage 

 corpuscles which lay close to the border of the wound could be 

 accounted for by the mechanical pressure of the iron rod used in 

 producing the inflammation. The result was such that in the 

 middle of the articular cartilage, even by the most intense irrita- 

 tion, only slight changes could be produced in the cartilage tissue. 

 These changes consisted in an enlargement of both the cartilage 

 corpuscles and their cavities, while a formation of pus- corpuscles 

 could not be obtained. 



One year afterward, the late Prof. Eokitansky kindly placed in my hands 

 the second right rib of a man about twenty-five years old, who, in a drunken 

 brawl, had had the cartilage completely cut through six weeks before death. 



