OF THE LIGAMENTOUS TISSUE GENERALLY. 



M. Roux, have described them; but it is to Bayle and to Laen- 

 nec that we owe our complete knowledge of them. They 

 have a globular form, their surface is unequal and as it were 

 lobated; the largest anfractuosities contain vessels and infil- 

 trated cellular tissue. When split they are seen to be formed 

 of lobules and convoluted bands, connected by cellular tissue, 

 and of fibrous prolongations. They have few vessels inter- 

 nally. They are at first small and soft like the fibrine of the 

 blood ; they progressively increase in size and change their tex- 

 ture; they seldom become cartilaginous, but frequently osseous; 

 an ossification of a strong hardness is developed in them in an 

 irregular manner, and resembles in their thickness to a mulber- 

 ry calculus. They are often formed in the texture and near the 

 surface of the uterus; sometimes in the ovary, in the acciden- 

 tal cellular tissue of the serous membranes, and are then formed 

 of layers like a bulbous root, in the cellular tissue; and it has 

 been said in the bones also; they have been seen in the fingers 

 and eye-lids, under the mucous membrane of the nose; the 

 fungi of the dura mater are sometimes bodies of this kind; 

 once they have even been seen in the brain. 



Irregular fibrous productions are found in the cicatrices of 

 the liver, bones and skin; in the scrotum and elsewhere around 

 fistules. 



509. There is a production which comes very near the 

 ligamentous tissue: it is that of a white compact tissue, not 

 fibrous, nor laminar, nor cellular, semi-transparent, not chato- 

 yant, soft and tenacious. Some organs in a state of atrophy, 

 appear to be transformed into this tissue; the cicatrices of the 

 skin, that of the cellular tissue after the cure of chronic-phleg- 

 mous, and after that of old fistulse, and some white granulations 

 of the serous membranes, resembling the glands of pachioni, 

 are of this kind. 



There should also be referred to it, the sclerosis which is 

 observed in the cellular tissue and the skin in elephantiasis 

 of the limbs, scrotum, and vulva, and which has also been 

 seen in the subperitoneal cellular tissue, in a case of cancer. 



It is to this production that we, must also refer the greater 

 number of the polypi of the uterus and especially of the va- 



