MELAN^EMIA. 257 



flakes (Schollen) containing pigment. The cells which I 

 discovered in many respects bore a resemblance to colour- 

 less blood-corpuscles ; they were spherical, but frequently 

 also rather oblong, nucleated cells, within which a 

 greater or less number of large black granules were to 

 be seen. In this case also the occurrence of a large black 

 spleen was again verified. Since that time attention has 

 been continually more and more drawn to 

 these conditions by Meckel himself and 

 by a number of other observers in Ger- 

 many, and last of all by Frerichs, and 

 in Italy by Tigri. Tigri has not scrupled 

 to designate the disease milza nera, from 

 the blackness of the spleen in it, whilst 

 according to the view of Meckel which has been ex- 

 panded by Frerichs, it is rather one of the more severe 

 forms of intermittent fever which is to be explained in 

 this way. 



It has been attempted to explain the serious import of 

 these affections by supposing that the elements, which 

 find their way into the blood, accumulate at certain 

 points in the more minute capillary districts, and there 

 produce stagnation and destruction. This was especially 

 held to be the case in the capillaries of the brain, in 

 which they were said to attach themselves after the man- 

 ner of emboli to the points of division, and so occasion 

 sometimes capillary apoplexies, sometimes the comatose 

 and apoplectic forms of severe intermittent fever. Fre- 

 richs has added a new and important kind of obstruction, 

 namely, that of the minute hepatic vessels, which is said 

 ultimately to give rise to atrophy of the parenchyma of 

 the liver. 



Fig. 76. Melanaemia. Blood from the right heart (Of. ' Archiv f. pathol. Anato- 

 mie und Physiologic,' vol. ii., fig. 8, p. 594). Colourless cells of various shapes 

 filled with black, and in part angular, pigment-granules. 300 diameters. 



It 



