414 INFLAMMATION. 



in the constituent elements of an inflamed tissue. Nobody, nowadays, is 

 intending to deny the emigration of colorless blood-corpuscles from capillary 

 blood-vessels and small veins during the inflammatory process. Specimens 

 obtained from the brain under consideration, by the immediate transportation 

 of softened parts of the white and gray substance under the microscope, 

 plainly demonstrated the existence of such a process. Along the wall of an 

 enormously enlarged and engorged blood-vessel were seen colorless blood- 

 corpuscles of a club shape, with one blunt extremity still in the caliber of the 

 blood-vessel, with a thin pedicle still embedded in its wall, with the other 

 blunt extremity protruding outside the periphery of the blood-vessel. Not 

 infrequently a colorless blood-corpuscle was seen to be attached to the wall of 

 the vessel by means of a slender pedicle, the main mass of the corpuscle being 

 outside the wall of the blood-vessel or within the lumen of the peri vascular 

 space. There cannot be any doubt that the emigrated colorless blood-cor- 

 puscles share in the formation of pus-corpuscles, yet I lay stress upon the 

 fact that the main source of inflammatory elements and pus-corpuscles must 

 be looked for in the living substance of the inflamed tissue itself. More espe- 

 cially in the white substance of the brain under consideration, all the stages 

 were traceable, from the granular enlargement of the living matter of an axis- 

 cylinder up to the complete development and formation of inflammatory ele- 

 ments and pus-corpuscles therefrom. 



' (3) Non-medullated Nerve-fibers. A certain portion of my specimens, which 

 was taken from the vicinity of the abscess, exhibited a large number of non- 

 medullated nerve-fibers in bundles cut longitudinally and transversely. In 

 the longitudinal bundles, the gray nerve-fibers were so closely packed together 

 that but a very faint striation could be traced out. In the midst of such bundles 

 there were numerous nests of medullary elements, of a prevailing oblong shape, 

 and independent of any blood-vessels. Around these nests the following 

 changes in the non-medullated nerve-fibers could be made out : First, the 

 nerve-fibers had assumed a beaded or rosary -like appearance ; next, they had 

 become spindle-shaped and coarsely granular ; after this, evidently from an 

 increase in the size of the granules, the nerve-fibers had been transformed 

 into an oblong cluster of bioplasson, within which, through the formation of 

 a separating cement-substance, medullary elements made their appearance, 

 in clusters, still retaining their spindle shapes. Lastly, a number of such 

 spindle-shaped nests had coalesced, and rows and clusters of medullary ele- 

 ments could be seen, separated from each other only by a small number of 

 unchanged non-medullated nerve-fibers. 



Wherever such a transformation of nerve-fibers into clusters of medullary 

 elements had taken place in a larger district, the result was the formation of 

 an inflammatory nest, in which' the elements were connected with each other 

 by delicate threads. I have not seen an abscess in the middle of non-medul- 

 lated nerve-fibers, but it is obvious from what I said before, that through the 

 breaking apart of these medullary elements, as yet connected by delicate 

 threads, pus-corpuscles may arise. 



I claim, basing myself upon direct observation, that inflammatory foci, 

 with crowded inflammatory elements, can arise from direct changes of the 

 bare axis-cylinders constituting non-medullated nerve-fibers, independently 

 of either blood-vessels or emigration of colorless blood-corpuscles. 



(4) Gray Substance. In the vicinity of the abscess of the brain, I have met 

 with a number of changes in the gray substance. First, the points of inter- 



