THE LIVER. 701 







ularly globular corpuscles, red blood-corpuscles, and a finely 

 granular detritus. The coarsely granular bodies were very 

 numerous, and showed the characteristics of pus-corpuscles 

 viz. : the granules of living matter which they contained were of 

 greatly varying sizes. In colorless blood-corpuscles, even of per- 

 sons of a good constitution (see page 62, Fig. 20), the granules 

 are more or less uniform in size, and their increase in such an 

 irregular manner could be due only to inflammation. Hence, the 

 diagnosis of pus-corpuscles in the portal veins was made. These 

 corpuscles could not have originated in loco, for the surrounding 

 connective tissue displayed very slight, if any, inflammatory 

 changes. A branch of the hepatic artery also contained a lim- 

 ited number of corpuscles of this kind on an average, smaller in 

 size than those found in the portal veins, and pale, granular 

 plates were also seen in the caliber of the artery, which were 

 probably detached endothelia of the vessel itself. This specimen 

 seems to prove that pyaemia is really caused by the embolic 

 accumulation of pus-corpuscles, which circulate in large numbers 

 in the whole vascular system. The older views concerning the 

 cause of pyaemia unquestionably deserve attention, although it is 

 difficult to explain why pus- corpuscles, collected in a certain nar- 

 row, vascular district, should excite purulent inflammation in the 

 neighboring tissues. 



At the periphery of the infarction the liver epithelia appeared 

 unchanged, and the capillaries contained a large number of irreg- 

 ular, coarsely granular bodies, in some places completely chok- 

 ing the caliber, though without producing dilatation. All these 

 bodies were markedly smaller than those found in the portal 

 veins, and yet in part slightly exceeding the size of colorless 

 blood-corpuscles. From what I have stated before, a diagno- 

 sis of pus-corpuscles in the capillaries might be admitted. Still 

 more striking features were certain elongated bodies noticed in 

 the calibers of the capillaries, of the size and aspect of epithelia. 

 The possibility of their being detached vascular endothelia cannot 

 be denied. If there were a positive proof that cancer epithelia 

 could be carried into the circulation and produce embolisms in 

 certain narrow, vascular districts, we would certainly be brought 

 one step nearer to the understanding of how secondary carci- 

 noma forms by embolism. Such a proof, however, has not yet 

 been obtained. (See Fig. 314.). 



Fatty degeneration is of rather common occurrence in the 

 liver. We can trace the transformation of the bioplasson-granules 



