122 ORGANISATION AFTER SUPPURATION. 



free pus-secreting surface ; it falls under the category of ulcers, 

 Avliich we shall presently have occasion to consider. 



^ 98. But the pus is not always discharged externally. Kay, 

 it maybe made capable of reabsorption, at any stage of its accu- 

 mulation, by fatty degeneration of its corpuscles, and so be ab- 

 sorbed. Moreover, some recent observations make it likely that 

 this capacity for being reabsorbed belongs even to abscesses of 

 old standing which have become cheesy, and whose size has con- 

 tinued the same for long periods of time. The cheesy matter 

 enters the blood-vessels and lymphatics in a minutely particulate 

 form, and may then (as we shall see hereafter) give rise to 

 miliarv tuberculosis. 



D. Organisation after Suppuration. 



^99. The sum of all that has already been said concerning 

 the nature of pus shows clearly enough, I believe, that this pro- 

 duct is something alien, something which has become foreign to 

 the organism, and against which it is not guarded by a protecting 

 coat of epithelium as it is against the outer world generally. 

 From the moment, therefore, that the abscess is constituted as 

 such, the organism tends to restore its own internal unity and 

 completeness (Insichgeschlossensein) which are disturbed by the 

 presence of the abscess. To this end however the simpler means 

 of organisation referred to above, sc, the production of vessels 

 and connective tissue are not of themselves adequate. A new 

 skin and cuticle have to be formed ; and this brings us to that 

 most interesting variety of morphological evolution which is 

 usuallv termed repair hj second intention. The term is primarily 

 applied to the healing of wounds, when we have failed to restore 

 the solution of continuity by precise apposition of the divided 

 parts, when suppuration has compelled us to remove our sutures 

 and strapping, or when the loss of substance is so great that the 

 due approximation of the cut edges is impossible, and the paren- 

 chyma is left unprotected, exposed to the action of the atmo- 

 sphere, kc. Here too, however, the denotation of the term 

 transcends its definition. Exactly the same phenomena recm' 

 when the organism has to be shut off from an abscess, or any- 

 thino- analogous to an abscess (^ 9G) : when a portion of the 

 body has been converted by necrosis, burning, or corrosion into 



