164 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
The next stage consists in the division of the spindles. A constric- 
tion between two nuclei has already been mentioned, and in this way 
a spindle assumes a biscuit or hour-glass form. One cell frequently 
divides across several times, and then we find a row of cells evidently 
all derived by division from one parent, the whole group retaining the 
spindle form, and reminding us forcibly of the similar groups of cells 
in cartilage. 
The '^p'ndles, however, often do not retain their shape until they 
divide • I with the multiplication of nuclei, they assume an irregular 
outline, and form moveable multi-nucleated masses, which have been 
particularly described, and admirably figured by Strieker and Norris.* 
They are best seen in cases where the cornea itself has been injured, 
and where the whole process of suppuration runs a more rapid, and, so 
to say, less orderly course than -^'here the keratitis is merely a part of 
a general inflammation of the eyeball. 
The spindles or multi-nucleated masses having broken up, we have 
the pus corpuscles fully formed with their active movements and powers 
of spontaneous locomotion, and the process, so far as the suppuration is 
concerned, is complete. There are, however, other appearances met 
wdth in inflamed cornese which it is necessary to notice. Frequently a 
cell is seen which still retains its stellate form. It is, however, en- 
larged, its processes are thicker and shorter than natural. It still 
possesses its normal nucleus ; but in addition to this it contains one or 
more other nuclei, similar to those of the spindles, or of pus corpuscles, 
and these lie in a part of the protoplasm which is much more coarsely 
granular than the remainder of the cell. These are real well-defined 
nuclei, and are not merely dark spots in the protoplasm, such as are 
often seen in normal cells, f and which somewhat resemble the pigment 
masses in the glanglionic cells of the brain and spinal cord. Again, 
one of the processes of a stellate cell is swollen and rounded at the 
extremity, and the protoplasm in its interior is granular and refract- 
ing. There can be little doubt that these cells finally divide and give 
origin to pus corpuscles, probably after having become irregularly- 
shaped, many-nucleated masses, like those which originate from the 
spindles. Such is, I believe, the process of suppuration as it occurs in 
the cornea, but it must not be supposed that the stages are passed 
through as regularly as they have been described, and that, at a given 
moment, elongated corneal cells alone are to be seen, at another spindles 
only, and at another pus. At every stage, on the contrary, almost 
every form is to be seen, and this greatly increases the difficulty of 
understanding the appearances. A very few minutes after the applica- 
tion of the caustic an increase in the number of the wandering or pus cells 
is to be noticed, an increase so rapid that I think it can be explained 
only by assuming an immigration from without ; and at the most ad- 
* Log. cit. s. 9. Taf. I. fig. 3. 
t Compare the drawings accompanying Lipmann's Paper on the Terminations of the 
nerves in the cornea, in Virchow's Archiv. : Bd. XLVIIL, s. 218. Taf. VII., figs. 1-4. 
