Osseous Concretions are not unfrequently developed in the dense fibroid exudations occasioned by the process of chronic inflammation recurring in the pseudo-membranes. We shall have occasion to return to this subject in a future page.

2. In reference to the secondary effects produced in the organism by general pericarditis, among which we must especially place extensive inflammations of the large serous sacs, it is worthy of notice that several, as for instance cachexia and dropsy, usually occur at an early stage and in a high degree of development. These conditions are occasioned by the injurious influence exerted by the pericardiac process on the heart, in consequence of which the muscular substance of that organ is paralyzed, its color changed to a dirty brown or yellow, and a flabby condition induced, which admits of the texture being easily torn, and which speedily leads to (passive) dilatation of the heart. These phenomena are collectively the more striking in proportion as the pericarditis is chronic, and the exudation is purulent, hemorrhagic, or tuberculous; the dilatation becomes more permanent, the more completely the coagula have been metamorphosed into a thick dense resisting tissue surrounding the heart.