ECHINOCOCCUS ALTKICIPAEIENS. 217 



of the lymphatics is the cause of their rapid diffusion in certain 

 directions, and of their slight development in comparison with 

 Echinococci in other situations. 



" 3. As only transparent membranes occurred in the greater 

 part of the tumour, the animals had probably long been dead, 

 and their vesicles collapsed, after their contents had been absorbed. 

 However, this membrane alone is sufficient for the diagnosis, ac- 

 cording to Virchow. 



" 4. Virchow wonders that he found no hooks of Echinococci in 

 the larger superficial vesicles, as it is well known that these are 

 not absorbed. This can only be explained by the fact that these 

 vesicles had been converted into the true sterile acephalocysts, so 

 that sterile Echinococcus-ves'icles must also occur in man, produced 

 from immature, bookless animals. 



" 5. Apparently the process here referred to cannot be explained 

 by an extensive immigration of the embryos of Echinococcus, 

 but only by the production of the young in the liver itself. 

 Perhaps we shall find data for the explanation of the production 

 of Echinococcus-bvids, in the peculiar, stellate, anastomosing, and 

 probably cellular nets, from which a larger system of canals is 

 formed, in which coarsely granular bodies were developed into 

 large vesicles, surrounded by a thick capsule. 



" 6. In the process here described we meet not only with several 

 vesicles lying in the same cavity, but with an actual nesting of 

 one vesicle within the other." 



In Virchow's f Archiv fur pathol. Anatomie/ &c. (x, pp. 206 — 

 209, 1856), Luschka communicates another case of this multi- 

 locular, ulcerating Echinococcus-tumour. The liver, which was 

 swollen up to nearly twice its natural size, only contained paren- 

 chyma in the right lobe, and this was very dry and permeated by 

 an abundance of thinly fluid bile of a strong yellow colour ; the 

 hepatic lobes were at the same time sharply separated, not by 

 vessels, but by ligamentous partitions. The left hepatic lobe, 

 which was converted into a sac of the size of a man's head, con- 

 tained a yellowish-green, flocculent, pus-like fluid ; its inner 

 surface had the appearance of a dingy-green felt, and exhibited 

 larger and smaller tubercles and innumerable roundish openings. 

 The wall, - 5 to 2 centim. in thickness, consisted of the greatly 

 thickened peritoneal coat, and a pale-yellow, cartilage-like solid 

 mass growing exuberantly against the cavity and the parenchyma 

 of the right lobe ; in this there were innumerable smaller and 



