The Present Position of Some Adenoid Tissue Problems with Special Reference to the Tonsils

Abstract

The so-called germinative centres serve, at any rate principally, the purpose of lymphocyte destruction, while the production of lymphocytes must be sought for elsewhere in the tissue. A correlation between receding anginas and the structure of the tonsil is not only expressed in the peculiarity of the tonsillar crypts and their oft-described alterations. But besides, the adenoid tissue (with the germinative centres)suffers hyperplasia in response to angina or a universal process, the demand for an increased lymphocyte destruction gradually resulting in a formation of new yerminatize centres. Coincidentally, the proportions and the length of the crypts are influenced by an expansion of their surfaces on account of the increased production of adenoid tissue. Thus an increased possibility for stagnation and chronic infection: A circulus vitiosus.

The necrobiosis and the coming to a functional stand-still of the germinative centres which is sometimes found, often mingled with normal centres, must be a result of toxic influence and must be interpreted as a dysfunction (they are not simply a state of atrophy or a natural stage of development, as maintained by some).

But this necrobiosis may also be a circumstance inciting formation of new germinative centres in order to compensate the restrained function, as a result of which process we are again switched into the circulus vitiosus already indicated by an expansion of the cryptal surfaces (the larger the cryptal surface the larger the area for inflammation etc.).