Purser — On Inflammation and Suppuration, 163 
severe and persistent as in our case, the corpuscles do not recover their 
stellate form, but undergo still further changes. 
In the next stage of the inflammatory process the cells have com- 
pletely lost their primitive form and have become perfect spindle, or 
club-shaped bodies. Their protoplasm has become granular and more 
highly refractive than that of the normal cells, and examined in the 
fresh condition, spontaneous changes of shape can frequently be observed 
in it. The cells now usually contain more than one nucleus. I have 
counted as many as seven in one cell, and three or four are very com- 
mon. They are round or oval, with a variable number of nucleoli, 
and are sometimes visible in the fresh condition, but become much more 
distinct after the addition of reagents. They often lie at considerable 
distances from each other, and the cell is not uncommonly constricted 
between two of them. The appearances at this stage are often very 
beautiful. The spindle-shaped cells lie with the greatest regularity, 
those of one plane crossing at right angles those of the next. They 
are best seen in cases where the inflammation has been excited by passing 
a seton through the eye-ball, for, where the cornea has been directly 
irritated, the inflammatory process proceeds so much more rapidly that, 
mixed with the spindles, are generally seen a great number of perfect 
pus corpuscles, and so the regularity of the picture is lost. 
That these spindle-shaped bodies are developed from the stellate 
cells of the cornea is plain, for the following reasons. We have already 
seen that the stellate cells, without losing their characteristic appear- 
ances, show a marked tendency, at an early stage of the inflammation, 
to become elongated, and this is observed first at those parts of the 
cornea where subsequently the true spindles are first to appear, viz. : — 
at the periphery when the bulb has been traversed by a thread, and in a 
zone surrounding at some distance the eschar when the centre of the 
cornea has been cauterised. As the spindles appear the stellate cells dis- 
appear, and where the regular arrangement of spindles described exists, 
few or no stellate cells are to be found. This occurs often within 
twenty-four hours or less after the commencement of the experiment, 
long before any disappearance of the normal cells by degeneration could 
have taken place, and while in other parts of the cornea these bodies 
are scarcely altered from their normal condition. Lastly, in some of the 
spindles two kinds of nuclei occur ; one that already described, the other 
resembling very closely that of the stellate cells. This latter is smoother, 
flatter, and less refracting than the other more common kind. It is 
diflicult to describe these appearances, but they are perfectly distinct, 
particularly in chloride of gold preparations, and cannot be mistaken by 
any one accustomed to examine objects of this nature. 
How the nucleus of the spindlt, which closely resembles that of the 
pus corpuscle, originates from the nucleus of the stellate connective 
tissue cell, I am unable positively to state. The invisibility of the 
nuclei in the fresh condition would make it impossible to actuallj^ ob- 
serve the change taking place; but I think there can be little doubt 
that, with the more coarse granulation, in most cases, a process of 
division occurs. 
