Purser — On Inflammation and Suppuration, 
165 
vanced periods some few stellate cells persist, wliich from some unknown 
cause, refuse to proliferate. Still the general course of the inflamma- 
tion is, I believe, as I have described it, and in favourable specimens 
the different stages can be clearly traced, sometimes existing separately 
in different regions, sometimes co-existing in the same part. 
It will thus be seen that the main point on which Cohnheim relies 
in support of his theory must be given up, and that in an inflamed 
cornea the stellate cells do not remain unchanged or merely degenerate, 
but that they undergo changes of an active kind, terminating in their 
multiplication and division into pus corpuscles. 
This point being given up the other parts of the argument are of 
little importance and may be dealt with briefly. 
With regard to the part of the cornea in which the suppuration 
commences, I have also to differ from Cohnheim. When the bulb is 
traversed by a thread the changes commence, as was to be expected, at 
the periphery and extend towards the centre, ^ut when the centre of 
the cornea is cauterised the suppuration commences in a zone surround- 
ing the eschar, and separated f - )m it by a more or less considerable 
interval. This zone, which may be called the zone of proliferation, 
is separated also from the margin of the cornea by a border which at 
first contains only a few pus corpuscles, and which, at a time when 
nearer the centre pus is fully formed, often contains only spindles or 
stellate cells. The zone of proliferation appears to approach the margin 
first at the upper and lower parts of the cornea, and this is due I believe 
partly to the intra- corneal pus meeting here the stream of immigrating 
leucocytes, and partly to the fact that here the large blood-vessels 
approach the cornea, and the membrane receives not only the largest 
number of wandering cells, but also the freest supply of nutritive 
material, and is consequently able to produce pus most rapidly. 
The presence of cells containing coloured granules in the inflamed 
cornea after an injection of the colouring material into the blood or 
lymph is not of much importance. The number of such cells is quite 
insignificant compared to the total number of pus cells in the cornea, and 
their presence merely shows, as Strieker remarks, that under favour- 
able circumstances blood corpuscles may leave the vessels and wander 
into the cornea, a fact which, I believe, has never been denied in this 
discussion. 
I have often seen leucocytes containing coloured particles in the 
cornea, but I have never seen the colouring matter free or contained in 
the stellate cells. This, however, has been observed by Recklinghausen, 
Strieker,'^' and Hoffman, and Langerhans,t but I think it must be 
admitted that the vast majority of the coloured particles have been 
brought into the cornea by the wandering cells in whose interior they 
are seen. 
* Loc. cit. s. 14. 
t Ueber den Verbleib des in die Chculation eingefiihrten Ziiinobers. Archiv. f. 
Path. Anat. Bd. XLVIII. s. 313. 
