Iniiamiuatioii in Non-Vascular Parts. 271 



fibroblasts which approach; these cells push forward and into the 

 jelly like a phalanx of soldiery, break it down and gradually carry 

 it entirely away; and the local inflammatory condition disappears 

 with the removal of the foreign matter, the leucocytes and other 

 cells being able to return whence tliey came, or some perhaps dying 

 and undergoing disintegration. 



Hc-emorrhagic effusions, blood clots, masses of fibrin, coagu- 

 lated or completely necrosed tissue and loose bits of bone are all in 

 the same way objects for phagocytic activity of the cells, making 

 their appearance in the tissue reactions in inflammation. All dead 

 tissue, in fact, is the same thing as a foreign body in relation to 

 the functionating living tissue adjacent to it; it is a source of 

 chemotactic substances and acts as an excitant of inflammation. So, 

 too, just as non-vital foreign bodies, the living organisms which 

 enter the body from the exterior, the animal parasites and all 

 microbes, are to be looked upon as irritants and as causative of 

 inflammation to a greater or less degree, according to the chemo- 

 tactic substances which they contain. 



Inflammation in non-vascular parts of the body, of which there 

 are two which require special mention, the cornea and the cardiac 

 valves (cartilage and the calcified bone substance, which are also 

 avascular, have no marked inflammatory reactive power and are 

 subject merely to retrograde metamorphoses), presents practically 

 the same features as in the vascular tissues, save that emigration 

 and exudation of course cannot take place where there are no ves- 

 sels, but do occur from vessels at a distance. Numerous investi- 

 gators, particularly His and Virchow, and besides these Cohnheim, 

 Fuchs, Eberth. Ranvier, Giiterbock. Ribbert and Marchand, have 

 engaged in studies in connection with the process in question, and 

 have thereby materially added to our appreciation of the nature of 

 inflammation. Where the cornea has been injured by some trau- 

 matic lesion, by a foreign body, or some type of infection, leuco- 

 cytes actively penetrate to the focus from the blood vessels which 

 encircle the margin of the cornea in the conjunctiva. Although 

 these vessels are situated some distance from the focus of injury 

 there are to be noted in them the same dilatation, slowing of the 

 current and emigration as if they were immediately in the injured 

 area. It is probable that these vessels are influenced by reflex ner- 

 vous action, and it cannot be doubted that the injured corneal tissue 

 exerts a strong chemical attraction for the leucocytes by means of 

 substances dissolved in the corneal lymph and reaching the corneal 

 margin in the latter or exerting a far-reaching influence from 



