INFLAMMATION. 367 



(C) Inflammation of Bone. Numerous experiments made 

 during the years 1872 and 1873, on bones of dogs, cats, and rab- 

 bits, for the purpose of artificially producing inflammation, 

 enabled me to obtain a general view of the phenomena of oste- 

 itis, from its incipient stage up to the eighth day. These are : 

 first, the freeing of the bioplasson from its basis-substance ; and, 

 secondly, the return of the bioplasson to the juvenile condition. 



In the earliest stages of the inflammation, twenty-six hours 

 after the injury, also in the succeeding days, at the periphery of 

 the inflamed district, a dissolution of the lime-salts of the basis- 

 substance takes place in bay-lihe fields ; this destructive process, 

 however, does not invariably invade the whole of the territory, 

 but often only part. 



The decalcified basis-substance itself is next dissolved out, and in 

 its place flat or globular bioplasson masses become visible, either 

 single or coalesced into groups, exhibiting a number of nuclei, 

 each of which corresponds to an original nucleus of a bone-cor- 

 puscle. Within these coalesced groups, new nuclei originate, and 

 the multinuclear body presents the appearance formerly known 

 under the name of a "myeloplax." (See Fig. 155.) 



Such multinuclear bioplasson masses arise from one or sev- 

 eral coalesced bone territories, and represent the bioplasson of 

 the territory itself.* 



A multinuclear body, at the periphery of the inflammatory 

 district, may at once lay the foundation for the new formation of 

 a bone territory ; or it may, in the more central portions of the 

 inflammatory district, divide into a number of corpuscles, each 

 one of which is provided with a nucleus. The corpuscles, as well 

 as the larger bioplasson layers, are separated from the neighbor- 

 ing kindred formations by light, narrow rims, which are trav- 

 ersed by transverse filaments. These filamentous formations 

 are threads of living matter, by which all newly developed ele- 

 ments are connected with each other and also with neighboring 

 bone-corpuscles not yet set free. 



This series of changes may be observed in the middle of 

 the bone-tissue, as well as at the borders of vascular canals. The 

 dissolution of the decalcified basis-substance, as a rule, begins at 



* The multinuclear bodies are by no means formations confined exclusively 

 to the medullary tissue of bone. They may appear wherever territories 

 (units) existed before the infiltration with basis-substance took place, or 

 where the basis-substance, either in normal or in morbid processes, is slowly 

 being dissolved out, and thus the units of the tissue made free. 



