Under this head we shall discuss certain products in their nature probably albuminous, and essentially distinguished from other albuminous blastemata by their persistence in the condition of crudity. Owing to this persistence, as also to their being founded in a dyscrasial element, we rank them along with tubercle, with which, moreover, they occur not unfrequently in consecutive alliance.

They are, for the most part, solidified blastemata, resembling to the naked eye a translucent coagulated albumen. Now and then, however, they are opaque, and of a turbid whiteness. They consist of an amorphous, glebous, transparent basement, and of nucleus formations.

They occur in certain parenchymata in the shape of infiltration - very rarely in that of a collection of roundish nodules from the size of a hemp-seed to that of a pea. The liver, the spleen, and the kidneys are known to become affected with these infiltrations, which give to the surface of the organ a brawn-like aspect with a transparent margin, frequently representing a spurious hypertrophy of the organs named. (See "Hypertrophy.") Whether these blastemata occur in one, or in several, or in all of those organs, they mostly occasion considerable enlargement thereof, and at the same time a notable change in their consistency, the parenchyma becoming compact and of doughy brittleness.

The out-throwing of these blastemata occurs in an insensible manner.

In point of fact, they comprise that partly more or less solidifying, whitish, partly viscidly fluid blastema effused into the parenchyma of the kidney in Bright's disease, particularly in certain of its chronic forms.

As may be inferred from the above, and as experience amply confirms, these blastemata never occur but in connection with high grades of general dyscrasial disease; such, for example, as rhachitis, mercurial cachexia, inveterate syphilis, ague-cachexia, and especially certain tuberculoses.

The deposition of these blastemata is, therefore, never a local affection, but invariably indicative of an anomaly of general nutrition. It is clearly dependent upon dyscrasis, which may consist in an excess of albumen in the blood, and be either primitive or secondary, as in the tuberculosis resulting from the exhaustion of fibrin. The consequence of a copious and extensive secretion of these blastemata is the eventual exhaustion of albumen, and a watery condition of the blood [hydraemia], inductive of dropsy, anaemia, etc.

These blastemata usually abide altogether, and throughout in their primitive condition. Occasionally, however, there is observable, at certain spots, a transformation of their mass into molecular fat. They become opaque; of a whitish dulness; friable. This is especially the case in the liver and kidneys, and it is not improbable that cera-larda-ceous infiltration of the liver is the result of a progressive, diffused conversion of this albuminous blastema.