A. Cellular And Fibroid Formations

Cellular And Fibroid Formations have already been mentioned to occur as inflammatory products on the free surface of the ependyma, and to occasion the increase in the volume of the membrane itself (p. 272). A few cases have been noticed in which flat, or rounded, or irregular nodulated tumors of fibroid structure were developed in the lining membrane, independently, so far as could be traced, of any inflammatory process. Sometimes free bodies of a similar fibroid texture, and the fibro-cartilaginous appearance, are found in the ventricles; they are, most probably, merely tumors of the same kind which have been loosened from the ependyma, or the pedicle of which has been broken.

B. A Production Of Bone

A Production Of Bone takes place occasionally in the more bulky growths of the kind just described. In some few cases I have noticed here and there traces of a formation of bone in the fibroid products of inflammation attached to the ependyma; and in one well-marked case delicate plates of bone were formed so extensively in a knitted (areolar) false membrane of that kind, that the lining membrane seemed to be incrusted with them.

C. Tuberculosis

I have never met with tubercle on the lining membrane of the ventricles. The exceptional character, which the membrane assumes in this particular from other serous membranes to which it is allied can as yet only be accounted for with any probability, by supposing that in the process of softening, which goes on in acute tubercular exudations in this situation, the delicate structure of the lining membrane is destroyed too soon for the coagulation of the fluid blastema of tubercle to take place.

D. Morbid Growths Of Cancerous Nature

Morbid Growths Of Cancerous Nature, or of a nature allied to cancer, though they certainly do occur upon and within the ependyma, are extremely unfrequent in that structure, as well as in the choroid plexuses. I met with a very remarkable case of encephaloid degeneration diffused over the lining membrane of the cerebral ventricles, and encephaloid cancer of the tuber cinereum, in a girl of 10 years of age. The lining membrane of the enlarged dropsical ventricles was converted into a tolerably thick, white stratum of medullary disease, which formed round, and conical, nipple-like processes growing in towards the cavity.

e. On one occasion I met with an animal, resembling the cysticercus, with a large moderately filled bladder (Schwanzblase) attached to it, lying free in the right ventricle of a young person.

3. Anomalous Contents Of The Ventricles

As the most important of the unnatural contents of these cavities may be gathered from what has been already said, or from what will yet be mentioned, there needs no special enumeration of them.

The results of chemical examination of the effusions in hydrocephalus, afford but little interest; they have been made without sufficient attention to, and distinction of, the different forms which the disease presents.