162 CAVERNOrS TUMOUHS. 



concentration of the morbid growtli around the vessels and nerves 

 of a part appears to exert some influence on its internal arrange- 

 ment. For instance, Billroth has described a fibroid tumour of 

 the eyelids (which he afterwards sent to me for examination), 

 consisting of a number of sausage-like cylinders, in whose axes 

 the remains of minute nerve-trunks were distinctly traceable. 

 Treading in his footsteps, Czerny has recently separated a group 

 of sarcomata, under the name of ^' plexiform tumours," adding 

 the announcement that the branches of the vessels might occa- 

 sionally serve as well as those of the nerves to determine the 

 singular composition of the growth. The most striking case 

 however, is wdien all the vessels of a primarily myxomatous 

 tumour are surrounded by comparatively thick sheaths, which 

 consist throughout of round-cells. In the ordinary variety of 

 fibroma, the course of the vessels does not seem in any way 

 related to that of the fibrous bundles. It appears to me far more 

 likely that as the fibroma (which is an exquisite example of 

 the central mode of growth) increases in size, the newly- 

 formed products are intercalated between the existing fibrous 

 bands, which are thereby dissociated ; and that the incompletely 

 laminated structure of the growth is thus accounted for by a 

 repeated process of interstitial dissociation, and not by concen- 

 tric addition of the newly-formed products. 



Fibromata ai'e justly counted among the most benign of all 

 morbid growths. We shall find hereafter that the uterus is their 

 favourite seat ; and we shall then become acquainted with a series 

 of interesting modifications of the structural type which has 

 been just described. 



§ 129. YIII. — The cavernous tumour. The tissue of the 

 corpora cavernosa penis, with whose structure the reader is sup- 

 posed to be familiar, is the physiological prototype of the caver- 

 nous tumour. We find the same network of white, glistening 

 trabecular of connective tissue, in whose wide meshes (wide 

 enough to be seen by the unaided eye) the blood is contained as 

 in a sponge (fig. 52) ; we find the same elasticity of the trabe- 

 cular network, which allows of periodical variations in the amount 

 of the contained blood, causing alternate swelling and subsidence 

 of the growth ; finally, I have convinced myself by a series of 

 observations specially directed to this point, that the mode of 

 origin of the spongy or erectile tissue is the same in both cases. 



