INFLAMMATORY FATTY DEGENERATION. 393 



agencies which it is universally conceded produce in- 

 flammation, as for example after wounds, and chemical 

 corrosions, swells up, that its primitive fasciculi become 

 broader and more clouded, and that as a second stage 

 the same fatty degeneration commences in them, which 

 at other times we see primarily arise. 



It may therefore certainly, when quite general terms 

 are used, be said, that there does exist an inflammatory 

 form of fatty degeneration ; still, strictly speaking, this 

 inflammatory form is never anything more than a later 

 stage, a termination, which announces the commencing 

 disintegration of the structure of the tissue, when the 

 part is no longer in a condition to continue a separate 

 existence, but is to such an extent abandoned to the 

 play of the chemical forces of its constituent parts, that 

 the next result is its really complete dissolution. Now 

 inflammatory conditions of this kind are of very great 

 importance, because in all parts whose essential ele- 

 ments become changed in this manner, no immediate 

 restitution is possible. When inflammation takes place 

 in a muscle and in its course the primitive muscu- 

 lar fasciculi fall into a state of fatty degeneration, as a 

 rule they also perish, and we afterwards find a loss of 

 substance in the muscle at the spot where the degenera- 

 tion took place. The kidney, whose epithelium has 

 passed into a state of fatty degeneration, nearly always 

 shrivels up, and the result is a permanent atrophy. In 

 exceptional cases something perhaps occurs, which 

 reminds us of a regeneration of the epithelium, but 

 usually a collapse of the entire structure ensues. 

 The same thing is witnessed in the brain in yellow 

 softening, no matter how it may have been caused. 

 Whether there have been inflammation or not, a va- 

 cuity is formed, which is never again filled up with 

 nervous matter. Perhaps a simple fluid may replace 



