An introduction to pathology and morbid anatomy / by T. Henry Green.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to pathology and morbid anatomy / by T. Henry Green. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    dency to the production of fat, occurs under various cir- cumstances. The red blood cells being the carriers of oxycxen, aU those conditions in which the supply of blood is interfered with, the red blood cells diminished ii^^ber or defective in quaHty, or the oxygenation of the blood imperfectly performed, may lead to fatty degeneration. The interference with the supply of blood to the brain, for example, by thrombosis or embohsm, causes fatty degeneration of the brain-tissue. (See Cerebral Soften- ing.) The destruction of the red blood ceUs by phos- phorus and other poisons, and that general condition of anemia which sometimes exists in young people and is also produced by many chronic and acute diseases, are also followed by a similar result. The senile forms of fatty degeneration which are seen in the cornea and car- tilage, and are due to that diminution in the activity of the circulation which exists in old age; and the fatty degeneration of organs and tissues which have been long disused, and in which consequently the quantity of blood circnlating through them and the oxidation processes become diminished (see Fatty Infiltration of Muscle), are other examples of degeneration from this cause. The cancers and other rapidly growing tumours in which the rapidity of growth is out of proportion to the vascular supply, also undergo extensive fatty changes. Lastly, the imperfect oxygenation of the blood which results from certain chronic diseases of the lungs constitutes one element in the causation of the fatty degeneration which so frequently exists in these diseases. In proceeding to consider the histological changes which are produced in the tissues by an accumulation of fat, it must be stated, in the first place, that these vary very considerably according to the cause of the degeneration. In those cases in which the fat is derived from the meta- morphosis of the nitrogenous constituents of the tissues, the tissues are destroyed in the process ; whilst in other cases no such destruction usually takes place. Although these two conditions may occasionally be associated, yet