8 



NECKOSIS OF TISSUES. 



Fig. 1. 



farther destiny liercafter. The colourless protoplasm swells up 

 moderately and ceases to be visible. In a short time not a 

 single unaltered blood corpuscle can be found.* In certain 

 exceptional cases we may find blood corpuscles of an intense 

 brown tint aggregated together in masses of variable size, even 

 in advanced stages of mortification. The edges of such masses 

 are almost always scalloped (fig. 1, «) ; the outermost layer of 



corpuscles is seen breaking up into 

 minute coloured granules; and this 

 mode of decomposition may be re- 

 o-arded as the ultimate fate of all. 



§ 12. Changes taking place in 

 NUCLEATED CELLS constitute a second 

 group of the phenomena incident to 

 necrosis. We may start with the 

 general proposition that the death 

 of a lump of nucleated protoplasm 

 is followed by its speedy dissolu- 

 tion. Its disintegration is ushered 

 in, and in some measm-e facilitated, 

 by a phenomenon which we have 

 Ions: recomiised in the fibres of 

 striped muscle as " rigor mortis," 

 and which consists essentially in a 

 coagulation of those semi-fluid, viscid, albuminous matters in 

 which all the formed constituents of the cell — (in the present 

 case the nucleus and protoplasmic granules) — are embedded. 



Gangrenous disintegration 

 of the tissues, a. Masses 

 of aggregated blood cor- 

 puscles ; h. Fibres of un- 

 striped muscle; c. Fibres 

 of striped muscle; d. Their 

 break-up into Bowman's 



fllSCSj ■axnj' 



* It has been experimentally shown by Alexander Schnidt that in a 

 ayer of blood barely a line thick, which is in contact with air, but not 

 allowed to evaporate, the blood corpuscles soon disappear; in dogs' 

 blood this takes from fifteen to eighteen hours, in horses' blood about 

 three days, in ox blood, however, not less than eight or ten days. The 

 blood first assumes a lake tint ; we then (in the blood of the dog) see the 

 blood corpuscles first losing colour, then changing form, and appearing 

 more numerous by isolation. The decolorised discs are then wholly 

 dissolved. The decolorisation of the corpuscles, the passage of the 

 colouring matter into the serum, and the solution of the colourless 

 stroma, are all results of oxidation. {A. Schmidt, " Minor Researches in 

 Physiological Chemistry." Virclww^s ArcMv, xxix.) 



