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SOCIETY MEETINGSw 
skin and subcutaneous connective tissue of the hind extremities, 
resulting as a rule from repeated attacks of lymphangitis and 
cellulitis. According to Robertson the skin becomes thickened, 
hardened and more difficut to move on the subcutaneous tissue; it 
is dry and coriaceous, occasionally scaly, and falls into folds and 
fissures, which, in cases of long standing, may chap and supperate. 
This thickening of dermal and subdermal parts after a time causes 
much alteration of the limb and deformity, with impaired power 
of motion. According to pathologists elephantiasis should be 
considered as a disease coming under the head of connective tissue 
tumor or fibroma. Coates, in his recent work, describes elephan¬ 
tiasis arabuin as a localized thickening of the skin, beginning in 
attacks resembling erysiplas, at first passing of and then recur¬ 
ring. There is finally a permanent progressive and apparently un¬ 
accountable new formation of connective tissue, and so the 
characters of a tumor are assumed. The tissue produced is a 
loose succulent connective tissue like that of the skin, but 
containing more cells, and so more like inflammatory tissue. The 
epidermis is also thickened, so that the whole partakes of the 
character of an exaggerated hypertrophy of the skin. The new 
formation may extend inwards to the fascial, the intermuscular 
tissue, and even to the periosteum, inducing thickening of the 
bone. The disease is frequently regarded as taking place in the 
lymphatics. This view is supported by the fact that, the new 
formed tissue is generally very succulent, as if the spaces were 
overfilled with lymph, and there are sometimes dilated lym¬ 
phatics visible in the hypertrophied skin. 
Virchow, in his “ Pathologie des Tumeurs ” says that several 
names have been proposed for the elephantiasis of the Arabs. 
Fuchs called it pachydermia, but elephantiasis is far from a 
simple thickening of the skin ^ it is an affection which extends 
much more deeply. 
Mason Good employed the name of bucnemia. 
Kampfer gave if that of hypersarcosis. Elephantiasis com¬ 
mences with inflammatory prodroma, which have generally the 
character of erysipelas; that is to say, they commence generally 
by an attack of fever, which extends rapidly beyond the primi- 
