WEST OF SCOTLAND VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 677 
been more or less small ? How is it that we seldom or ever 
see tuberculization as the result of traumatic inflammation ? In 
many instances we find large masses of coagulated, partially 
organized, and fully organized lymph in the abdominal and other 
cavities co-existing with the tubercular deposits. If tubercu¬ 
lization is due to degeneration of an inflammatory exudate, why 
does not this lymph undergo a similar change ? (See also Dr. 
Eutherford Haldane). 
Patches of inflammation most certainly are frequently found 
in the interior of organs affected with tubercle, but in my opinion 
they are only secondary. In the granular tubercle in cattle 
familiarly known as grapes, we have immense masses of tuber¬ 
culous growths both on the pleura and peritoneum in many 
instances without the slightest ascites or adhesions of any kind. 
And we frequently find small miliary tubercles existing in lowly 
organized structures and serous membranes without the slightest 
trace of inflammation around them. In the livers of animals I 
have seen half the area of the gland occupied by encysted tubercles 
of various sizes, and yet the true gland structures, where not invaded 
by tubercle, remain structurally perfect; in these cases we have 
no ascites of the abdomen. On the other hand, I have seen the 
liver largely invaded with infiltrated tubercle, enlarged and 
solidified; in these cases we have ascites from pressure on the 
portal vein and posterior cava. And here I would remark, that 
in so far as my experience goes, we have a much greater 
amount of structural disease in the infiltrated, than in the en¬ 
cysted or granular form of tubercle. 
Now, gentlemen, since I do not allow that tubercle is the 
simple result of an inflammatory exudate, How, you will say, do 
you account for its formation ? 
Tubercle is as much a specific disease as is syphilis, or any 
other affection depending for its continuance in the system upon 
a morbid poison or principle, and this virus is discernible in the 
morbid products, and is capable of being transmitted by inocula¬ 
tion, providing the system is in a condition to allow of its pro¬ 
pagation ; and, further, that tubercle is dependent upon a true 
dyscrasia, and, like other diseases of a similar character, it cannot, 
as a rule, be produced by inoculation in the system of an animal 
which is already labouring under another dyscrasia, as was acci¬ 
dently proved by me in the inoculation of a dog suffering from 
distemper. Since forming this opinion I find it exactly coincides 
with that of M. Villemin, to which author I have before re¬ 
ferred. 
As to the period of growth or degeneration at which tubercular 
matter takes on its reproductive character I am not prepared to 
say; but that it is in some particular stage absorbed into the 
