104 PROTOZOA AND DISEASE 



" Dr. A. A. Kanthack observed that, with respect to Mr. Clarke's statements on 

 vaccinia and variola, Dr. . . . and Dr. ... had repeated the experiments origin- 

 ally carried out in Germany, and had seen nothing of the protozoa described. He 

 himself, in conjunction with Mr. . . ., had, moreover, found similar bodies to those 

 described in the epithelium raised by blisters in the human subject. The more 

 minute histology of normal tissues had, in fact, not been sufficiently carefully in- 

 vestigated as a check on such statements. In epithelioma cell-fusions were 

 common, and such became infiltrated with leucocytes ; various kinds of degenera- 

 tions ensued, with fragmentation of chromatin, the resulting products staining' 

 especially well with acid fuchsin. To draw a life-history from different appearances 

 in a section was not true evidence ; what must be done was to trace such a history 

 in its living progress beneath the microscope. If so many diseases as Mr. Clarke 

 had named carcinoma, sarcoma, vaccinia, variola, syphilis, and others were due 

 to a similar cause, where did specificity come in, for they had scarcely anything in 

 common? The speaker thought that the different appearances described by Mr. 

 Clarke were degeneration products.' 1 



What "kind of degeneration it was or in what way it produced so 

 many different appearances was not stated. I think it is extremely 

 improbable that any kind of degeneration could produce the tenta- 

 culiferous intranuclear bodies such as that shown in the photograph 

 (Fig. 33). There is only one kind of degeneration hyaline that 

 could account for even the homogeneous highly refracting bodies 

 such as those shown in Fig. 32 ; 2 and 7. I open the first recent text- 

 book on pathology that comes to hand to find the following definition 

 of hyaline material : 



' Chemically, hyalin is difficult to characterize, and the substance 

 is even less definite as a chemic body than amyloid and colloid 

 material.' 2 V. Recklinghausen's definition of the same substance 

 was : ' A body of albuminous nature, of homogeneous character and 

 high refractive power. It may be an early stage of amyloid. . . .' 



Thus the term ' hyaline degeneration ' is so vague that it will 

 very well include certain phases of very vigorous and healthy 

 protozoa. I repeat, with the utmost reverence for one of the 

 greatest of pathologists, my opinion that the pathology of Virchow 

 missed the complete explanation of malignant tumours by attributing 

 all aberrant cell-forms to the tissue-cells of the sufferer, and all 



1 Report of a meeting of the Pathological Society of London, Brit. Med.Journ., 

 April 6, 1895. 



2 Diirck, 'General Pathological Histology.' 



