On Certain Effects of Starvation on Vegetable and Animal Tissues.1

ABSTRACT That insufficient supply of nutritive material is closely connected with fatty degeneration of tissue is a well-ascertained pathological phenomenon. Rindfleisch, in his work on ‘Pathological Histology,’ expresses himself as follows in regard to this subject:—“This (the exclusively pathological category of fatty metamorphosis) includes all cases of disproportion between the means of nutrition and the parenchyma to be nourished. Such a disproportion may be caused either by a diminution of the nutriens, or by an increase of the nutriendum. If a minute vessel in the brain is plugged, the circulation in the area which it supplies is not wholly suspended, owing to the manifold anastomoses with neighbouring vessels ; nevertheless, a very considerable retardation of the current takes place, which may even give rise to temporary stasis and to haemorrhage, and this suffices to disturb nutrition, and so to cause fatty metamorphosis.”3