400 



INFLAMMA TION. 



more marked than normal, evidently due to a dissolution of the 

 lime-salts during life. Numerous medullary spaces, containing 

 a varying number of colloid corpuscles, traversed the bone. 

 Some of these bodies exhibited faint traces of the medullary cor- 

 puscles which composed them ; others, in the initial stage of the 

 colloid metamorphosis, were distinctly seen, consisting of medul- 

 lary corpuscles, so that each colloid body might be considered 

 as having originated from a group of coalesced medullary cor- 

 puscles. In some places long 

 rows of colloid corpuscles were 

 noticeable, each of which re- 

 sembled a territory with a 

 condensed, peripheral colloid 

 frame, and a central body, 

 somewhat like a bone-corpus- 

 cle. (See Fig. 168.) 



In the rib-bone of another 

 woman, dead of osteomalacia, 

 I found very large medullary 

 spaces, which were filled partly 

 with medullary and partly with 

 fibrous tissue, and contained 

 also a number of yellow-brown 

 pigment clusters. These spaces 

 were very vascular. In this 

 case no colloid corpuscles could 

 be detected. 



In dogs and cats, whose 

 bones were artificially brought 



into the condition of osteomal- 

 acia, all features described 



J5, bone-corpuscle ; L, distinctly marked la- 

 mellae ; C, colloid corpuscles, arranged in a row. 

 Magnified 500 diameters. 



FIG. 168. OSTEOMALACIA. FEMUR OF 

 A WOMAN; LONGITUDINAL SECTION. 

 CHROMIC ACID SPECIMEN. 



above as occurring in the mal- 

 acic femur of the woman were 

 present, and especially the col- 

 loid globules. These closely resemble fat-globules, but, never- 

 theless, were an entirely different substance, as they did not yield 

 to strong alkalies and acids, not even after being boiled with 

 them. Chloride of gold stained them a dark purplish-violet 

 color. The bones of the squirrel, which had been fed for thirteen 

 months with lactic acid, had compact portions as thin as paper. 

 They were, to a great extent, transformed into medullary and 

 fibrous tissue; they contained a large number of blood-vessels 



