TUBERCLES. 519 



development and early succumbed to a process of shri- 

 velling. You may with certainty assume that, where 

 you meet with a largish corpuscle of this description, a 

 cell had previously existed, and where you find a small 

 one, there once had been a nucleus, enclosed perhaps 

 within a cell. 



Upon examining the point which has been the leading 

 one in the doctrine of tuberculosis recently advanced, 

 namely tubercular infiltration of the lungs, we readily 

 arrive at the result which Reinhardt has set down as the 

 final one, namely, that tuberculosis is nothing more than 

 one of the forms presented by inflammatory products 

 when undergoing transformation, and especially that all 

 tuberculous matter is really inspissated pus. In fact, 

 what has been termed tubercular infiltration, can with 

 few exceptions be traced to an originally inflammatory, 

 purulent or catarrhal mass which has gradually, in con- 

 sequence of incomplete reabsorption, fallen into the shri- 

 velled and shrunken state in which it afterwards remains. 

 But Reinhardt was deceived when he thought he was ex- 

 amining tubercle. He was led astray by the false direc- 

 tion which had been given to the whole doctrine of tu- 

 berculosis from the time of Laennec until his own, espe- 

 cially through the fault of the Vienna school. If he had 

 confined himself in his investigations to the form of old 

 assigned to tubercle, and knot (granule), if he had ex- 

 amined the constitution of the knot in its different stages 

 and had afterwards compared the different organs in 

 which knotted (granular) tubercle occurs, he would un- 

 questionably have arrived at a different result. 



It may, at least according to what I consider to be the 

 correct view of the matter, certainly be said, that the 

 greatest part of whatever in the course of tuberculosis 

 does not appear in the form of granules, is an inspissated 

 inflammatory product, and has at any rate no direct rela- 



