228 Progress of Rational Pathology, 



process become yellow, and at last colourless ; yet they may 

 also be produced in other ways as they occur in exsudations 

 that contain no blood globules. It seems probable, that 

 the peculiar shade of colour of the softened brain arises from 

 these globules. In the yellow flattened spots into which the 

 cortical substance becomes changed, Henle has observed be- 

 sides the different kinds of inflamed globules and vessels, other 

 peculiar fibres (of effused fibrine) and certain small flattened 

 spots (of a fatty substance). Valentin describes two species 

 of rammolissement, a coloured, and a colourless : in the latter 

 the brain globules are soft and without form, the nervous tubuli 

 varicose frangible and easily falling into globule-shaped frag- 

 ments (which are very likely often mistaken for inflamed glo- 

 bules, as by Gluge and Bennett.) In the coloured form, some- 

 thing new is added to this simple degeneration, namely a quan- 

 tity of broken-down granular globules, whence the colouring 

 arises. They are like the pigment cells, with this difference, 

 that the included granules are brown and less highly coloured. 

 But as the pigment cells differ from the exsuded corpuscles in 

 containing fat, Henle thinks that the destroyed nervous fibres 

 themselves supply the material from which the globules are 

 formed. Gluge produced softening of the brain in rabbits, by 

 running needles into the cerebral substance ; but in this case 

 blood was always effused, so that it is not yet proved that soft- 

 ening and the production of inflamed globules are the results 

 of pure inflammation. All softenings have this in common, 

 that they are caused by the maceration of the cerebral substance 

 in exsuded or extravasated bloody fluid. Carswell describes an 

 additional form of rammolissement, the result of atrophy or of 

 gangrene in the other soft parts, and the consequence of defi- 

 cient nourishment, by the closure of the vessels leading to the 

 brain. In hardening of the brain, Gluge found the primitive 

 fibres quite altered, and of irregular form, as if compressed. 



h. Nerves. — Their regeneration takes place, according to 

 Valentin, as follows : — The exsudation between their ends is 



