Inflammation of the meningesor brain may follow injuries, not only to the brain itself, but to the scalp and adjacent parts, as the orbit and ear.
That the wound has penetrated the meninges is shown by the escape of cerebro-spinal fluid.
As the blood vessels of the pia mater are the principal source of supply to the spinal cord, hyperemia of the cord and of the meninges usually go together.
In the meninges we may find glioma, cancers, and psammoma, fibromata; aneurisms of the spinal arteries have been discovered in the spinal canal.
Melanotic tumors have been found in the brain and meninges in the form of small, black nodules in gray horses, and in one instance are believed to have induced the condition known as stringhalt.
The post-mortem appearances in animals are intense redness and injection of the meninges of the cerebellum, of the medulla oblongata, and the spinal cord.
There was also general encephalic engorgement, and in one experiment intense congestion of the meninges was observed.
The central nervous system is often spared, notwithstanding extensive bleeding elsewhere, themeninges being somewhat more frequently involved.
The infection is liable to spread to the meninges of the cord and give rise to meningitis, particularly when the disease begins in the arches.
Inflammation of the intestinal mucosa and congestion of the meninges were the only changes found on autopsy.
On autopsy he noticed congestion of the organs and in two of the three rabbits experimented upon punctiform hemorrhages of the brain with congestion of the meninges were found.
On the surface of the brain between the latter and the meninges were found several larger and smaller sacs filled with lymph, the spinal canal full of serum; in the spinal cord plain traces of inflammation.
The symptoms evidently depended upon hemorrhages in the meninges and the nervous system, affecting particularly the right pyramidal tract.
The autopsy showed slightly congested lungs; no other lesion except a sharply defined hemorrhage in the cervical spinal meninges and over the meninges of the temporal and occipital lobes.
Care, however, must be taken that it is not pushed in too far, otherwise it may pierce the anterior upper margin of the cerebellum, and if an abscess be present, the meninges may thus become infected.
When the former kind, or irritated erysipelas, continues long, the patient becomes so weakened as to be liable to all the symptoms of this inirritated erysipelas; especially where the meninges of the brain are primarily affected.
If the meninges of the brain sympathize with other torpid parts, or are primarily affected, delirium, stupor, and perhaps hydrocephalus internus occur, see Class II.
The brain and its meninges participate, in many respects, in the changes worked by rachitis, and mainly in the abnormal vascularization of the bones.
The almost immediate effects of a blow are nausea and vomiting, and the same thing is observed in local inflammation of the meninges of the brain.
We also noted at this point that the flocculus cerebri was extensively lacerated and that the superior sagittal sinus which is a venous blood containing channel in the top of the meninges was also lacerated.
There was engorgement of blood vessels in themeninges covering the brain.
The cerebral meninges and brain-tissue are frequently the seat of specific growths and minute abscesses.
In the pia mater perhaps a little increase of cells; meninges of brain otherwise normal.
In general terms, they are most marked in cases attended with inflammatory exudation, and least so when, instead of this lesion, there is only vascular congestion of the meninges of the spinal cord.
In malignant cases that end fatally Rilliet and Barthez state that both the large and small vessels of the cerebral meninges and the brain are found hyperæmic, but in a variable degree.
Actual inflammation of the meninges has only been detected in a very few cases.
