322 SEROUS MEMBRANES. 



absorbed into tlie blood together with it. The opposed serous 

 surfaces are approximated until they touch each other, when the 

 inflammatory products by which they are coated, coalesce. Soon 

 too, the bridge along which the vessels of the parietal and 

 visceral laminae anastomose with one another, is completed. 



This series of changes finally results in the formation of 

 those well-known "bands of adhesion," which connect the cos- 

 tal with the pulmonary pleura, the heart with the pericardium, 

 the various abdominal viscera witli one another, and with the 

 abdominal wall. Their minute structure has often been inves- 

 tigated ; like the serous membranes, they are coated with a 

 single layer of pavement epithelium ; in addition to this, they 

 contain wavy bands of connective tissue, between which run 

 long and slender blood-vessels ; newly-formed nerve-fibres have 

 also been found on one occasion in an adhesion (VirchovS). What 

 seems to me most important is the fact that in the present case, 

 the continual shifting of the opposed surfaces on one another, 

 the incessantly renewed approximation and separation of the two 

 ends of the adhesion, exert a modifying influence upon the 

 organisation of the embryonic tissue ; the resulting connective 

 tissue, instead of assuming the character of ordinary cicatricial 

 tissue with its short, inelastic and rigid fibres, approaching more 

 nearly to the normal type of lax areolar tissue. 



Thus it is clear that the final result of the inflammatory 

 organisation depends very materially on the external conditions 

 under which it takes place ; and that in particular, a repeated 

 stretching and relaxation of the cicatrix determines the produc- 

 tion of a true lax areolar tissue in place of the inelastic cicatricial 

 tissue. 



§ 276. — Suj)piirative injlammation. We distinguish two va- 

 rieties of suppuration, primary and secondary. Most abdo- 

 minal inflammations, particularly those which are caused by 

 perforation of the alimentary canal, or by infection from the 

 organs concerned in parturition (puerperal fever), afford abun- 

 dant opportunities for the study of the former variety. If the 

 inflammation happen to be quite recent (as in the so-called j^eri- 

 tonitis fuhninans) we may easily convince ourselves that in this, 

 as in the adhesive variety, a stage of "recent agglutination" 

 opens the series of morbid changes. In fact, the histological 

 transformation of the fresh adhesive matter into pus, appears 



