STRUCTURAL CHANGES DUE TO DAMAGE. 



325 



In like manner a n on- infectious foreign body may become encapsu- 

 lated within any of the tissues of the body. 



Still another example of chronic interstitial inflammation appears 

 to be furnished by cases in which the parenchyma has suffered 

 atrophy or some other form of destruction, and the loss is made 

 good by the production of fibrous tissue without a precedent forma- 

 tion of granulations. In embolism of a branch of one of the 

 coronary arteries supplying the heart-muscle the destruction of the 

 muscle-fibres seems to stimulate the formative activities of the cells 

 of the interstitial fibrous tissue. The deduction that the production 

 of fibrous tissue is the direct result of a loss of parenchyma is, how- 

 ever, not quite clear, for the stimulus to tissue-production may 



FIG. 287. 



f 



Chronic interstitial inflammation. Early stage of productive interstitial neuritis. (Nau- 

 werck and Barth.) The section is from the anterior root of a lumbar nerve. It repre- 

 sents a number of apparently normal medullated nerve-fibres in cross-section, with 

 proliferation of the cells of the endoneurium, as is evidenced by the abundance of nuclei 

 in that tissue. 



result from the unusual strain brought upon the part of the heart 

 which is deprived of the usual support of muscular tissue. It 

 may be that other cases in which a loss of parenchyma is replaced 

 by fibrous tissue are also not due to stimulation of fibrous-tissue 

 production because of that loss, but are to be explained in a man- 

 ner analogous to the explanation of cirrhosis already offered. 



Further examples of interstitial inflammations are shown in Figs. 

 287 and 288. 



