MORBID GROWTH IX GENERAL. 79 



groat an intensity as to lead to chronic inflammation, and the 

 production of connective tissue. As the size of the knot 

 increases, the connective tissue presents more and more the 

 appearance of a capsule, continuous with the knot only at scat- 

 tered points of its surface — those, namely, where the vessels enter 

 it and leave it ; elsewhere it is smooth and humid, often lined with 

 pavement-epithelium. The continuity of the capsule with the 

 knot must originally have been universal. The partial solution 

 of this continuity demands explanation, and this explanation 

 can only be of an indirect kind. 



I presume that all observers are agreed in regarding the 

 interstitial cavities of the connective tissue {e.g. the bursa} 

 mucosa?), as produced by the movement of organs as a whole 

 upon one another, the space required for this play being furnished 

 by a partial softening of the connective substance. The wide 

 meshes of the areolar tissue are the simplest, the articular cavities 

 the most complex, examples of this arrangement. The case 

 with which we are now concerned is in all respects analogous 

 to the movement of one of the internal organs upon another, 

 inasmuch as no increase in the superficial area of the knot can 

 be imagined to take place without some displacement of its points 

 of contact with neighbouring parts. Embrace the right fist with 

 the palm and fingers of the left hand. On gradually extending 

 tlie fingers of the former we get an approximate illustration of 

 the phenomenon in question. The doctrines held on this subject 

 by the generation immediately before our own, differ from those 

 now adopted, just as the old view of brood-capsules difters from 

 ours. The capsule was considered as a pre-formed cystic or 

 cellular cavity, into which the "neoplasm" was subsequently 

 poured. * 



3. An infiltration. This term occurs here for the second 

 time, though used in a very difterent and very ina]^propriate 

 sense. When we speak of a tubercular infiltration of the lungs, 

 of a cancerous infiltration of the liver, we mean a uniform 

 swelling and condensation of large portions of these organs, 



* Hence the old division of tumours into cystic and non-cystic. The 

 former division coincided with benign, the latter with mahgnant, 

 growths. We shall hereafter see what measure of truth was here 

 attained by the practical instinct of the physician. 



