GRANULE-CELLSGLOBULES. 379 



unfrequently marked the early periods of microscopy. 

 He saw, when examining a kidney, bodies of this sort 

 in the interior of a canal, which he took for a blood- 

 vessel ; this happening at a time when the doctrine of 

 stasis was most in vogue, he imagined he had before 

 him a vessel with stagnating contents which were disin- 

 tegrating, and generating inflammatory globules. Un- 

 fortunately the blood-vessel was a uriniferous tubule ; 

 what he took to be parts of disintegrating blood-corpu- 

 scles, was fat ; and what he called inflammatory glo- 

 bules, fatty degenerated renal epithelium. One might 

 easily have spared oneself this error in the history of 

 stasis, but at that time there were few people who knew 

 what was the appearance of uriniferous tubules and 

 how they might be distinguished from vessels, and thus 

 some time elapsed before this theory of inflammation 

 was put down. 



At present we call the body a granule-globule and 

 regard it as the first distinct proof of degeneration, 

 when the cell no longer retains its existence as a cell, 

 but merely its former shape remains, after the parts 

 which really constitute a cell, namely the membrane and 

 the nucleus, have completely passed away. After this, 

 in accordance with external circumstances, either a com- 

 plete destruction of the parts ensues, or they may still 

 persist, coherent. If, namely, we have to deal with very 

 soft parts, in which much fluid or juice has been present 

 all along, the granules fall asunder. The medium 

 which bound them together and enabled them to retain 

 the globular form, namely, a remnant of the old cell- 

 contents, is gradually dissolved. The globule breaks up 

 into a crumbling mass, which is often still somewhat co- 

 herent in places, but from which one drop of fat after 

 another is detached, so that the correspondence with 

 milk is very beautifully displayed. 



