156 
PEARL-LIKE CONCRETIONS IN TRIPE. 
By Jas. Jounstone, D.Sc. 
Karly in 1919 Dr. Hanna, Medical Officer of Health for 
the Port of Liverpool, sent me some pieces of tripe which 
formed part of large consignments reaching this country from 
America. The tripe had been cleaned, boiled and frozen, and 
came in a tightly packed condition. Each of the pieces examined 
contained hundreds of small glittering, perfectly spherical 
pearl-like bodies varying between one and two millimetres in 
diameter. They were very hard in texture and easily detached. 
from the tissues in which they were embedded. 
Sections of the tissue containing these pearl-lke bodies 
were made, but the results were not satisfactory. In the 
processes of cleaning the mucous coat of the intestine had been 
removed and the submucous coat was very greatly altered by 
the freezing. The loose, spongy texture of the latter had 
disappeared and was replaced by a honeycomb-like structure 
with large spaces which became filled with air. The areolar 
texture had disappeared and the tissue was itself compact and 
hard. This is the well-known effect of relatively slow freezing 
of meat and fish tissues. The tissues shrink, forming hard and 
compact parts with large interstices between them, and their 
juices gather in the spaces, from which they drain away in the 
processes of thawing and subsequent handling, with the result 
of a loss of savoury constituents. It was, therefore, difficult to 
see what were the relations of the pearl-like bodies to the 
structures in which they were situated. 
Later on, however, Dr. Hanna obtained some fresh tripe, 
prepared from a cow’s stomach, containing similar intrusive 
bodies. These were examined and sections were made success- 
fully, and it was seen that the conditions were the same as in 
