WEST OF SCOTLAND VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 671 
Other authorities, too, who at this time looked upon tubercle 
only as a chance product, have gone to their long homes; some 
of them, perhaps, equally as ignorant of its true nature as they 
were on the day of their birth. 
Not only has the disease increased of late years amongst our 
ordinary domestic animals, but its ravages are widely extended to 
the feathered tribes, and even to such partially undomesticated 
animals as rabbits, rats, and others of the rodent species. 
Looking upon and contemplating an individual tubercle, w r e 
might be led to despise its apparent insignificance, and to ignore 
the deadly meaning of its presence ; but when we see thousands 
upon thousands of these knots existing in an organism a truth 
is forced upon our minds which we cannot refuse to recognise, 
viz., that we have to deal with an enemy at once insidious in its 
approach and fatal in its progress. 
Independently of its ultimate fatality, I think I may safely say 
that no morbid substance found in the organism of animals, or of 
man, is so protean in the number of functional derangements it 
gives rise to, for at one time accumulating round the oesophagus, 
it prevents one of the first acts necessary to the maintenance of 
organic life, viz., deglutition; at another time interfering with 
the functions of the testicles, producing sterility; again, pressing 
on the neck of the bladder, giving rise to retention of urine, and 
in some instances rupture of the bladder itself; now compressing 
the cystic, pancreatic, and salivary ducts, obstructing the flow of 
the bile, pancreatic juice, or saliva, into their natural channels; 
then blocking up the vessels of the brain or portal vein, inducing 
the effusion of serum ; pressure and paralysis in one case and 
ascites in the other : yet replacing the natural structure of the 
lymphatic glands, preventing the due absorption of the materials 
necessary for nutrition; further, by its presence in the ovaries of 
the female exciting persistent and maddening nymphomania, occa¬ 
sionally becoming deposited in the synovial membrane of joints, 
setting up synovitis and anchylosis, and, worse than all, by oblite¬ 
rating the air-cells of the great blood purifiers—the lungs—pre¬ 
venting the proper decarbonization of that fluid to which all the 
tissues of the body owe their origin. 
In considering the subject of tubercle, my aim will not be to 
enter minutely into its structure, but rather to consider its more 
practical bearings : nevertheless, it is necessary for the proper 
understanding of the matter, that I should enter somewhat into 
detail, for I am aware that many of you have not the oppor¬ 
tunity of investigating these questions, as you have other knots 
to unravel than the one under consideration. 
Designations are three, viz.:—Tuberculosis, Scrofula, and 
gtfuma. 
