1(51 
when not required, can be turned on one side, where it is 
quite out of the way of any apparatus which may be required 
in the supplementary body. The ring in which the whole of 
the stage rotates is divided into degrees on the edge, and 
serves the purpose of a goniometq^. — It. and J. Beck. 
A Microscopic Cause of Death. — At a recent meeting of the 
New York Pathological Society Ur. Neptet called attention 
to a state of the brain causing sudden death in infants. 
After stating the particulars of a case, he said — “ In such 
cases the microscope alone can reveal the real cause of death, 
and show the enormous changes which have taken place, 
especially in the white substance of the brain, as can be seen 
in any microscopical section taken from this specimen. We 
find accumulations of granule-cells or granule-globules lately 
described by Virchow, for the explanation of which I must 
say a few words with regard to the whole pathological 
process. Formerly the brain and spinal cord were considered 
as consisting of nothing else but specific nervous elements — 
ganglionic-cells and nerve-fibres. Afterwards Purkinje and 
Valentin described the epithelium of the ventricles under the 
name of ependyma, but Virchow, in 1853, showed that, 
besides the nervous elements, there are others belonging to 
the connective tissue group, which he named neuroglia. He 
showed, moreover, that in the nervous centres, just the same 
as in every other organ, we must make a distinction between 
pathological processes affecting the specific elements (paren- 
chymatous processes) and those taking place principally in 
the interstitial connective tissue (interstitial processes). For 
instance, what the French call ramollissement jaune (yellow' 
softening of the brain) is nothing else but fatty degeneration 
of the cells of the neuroglia, but not of the ganglionic cells. 
In cases of stillborn children, or of many of those who died in 
the early period of life, we find the cellular elements of the 
neuroglia increased in size (hypertrophy), then increased in 
number (hyperplasy), and finally undergoing fatty degene- 
ration, so that, instead of single cells of the neuroglia, w-e find 
in these cases accumulations of granule-cells or granule-glo- 
bules. In fact, we have interstitial encephalitis and inter- 
stitial myelitis, which explains the cause of death. Virchow 
found such diffuse interstitial encephalitis and myelitis in the 
infant, either accompanying constitutional syphilis of the 
parents or the acute exanthemata, especially smallpox of the 
mother, puerperal and other constitutional disturbances of the 
mother. He thinks that in those cases where the infants do 
not die this condition of the nervous centres may possibly be 
VOL. IX. — NEW SER. L 
