Jerry Friedman wrote:
>Nick Grundy wrote interestingly about miliary tuberculosis,
>but I think "nebulae" suggest a cloudy appearance on an
>x-ray picture, not star-like dots. Of course I may have
>been wrong in thinking pneumonia would produce "clouds".

Judging from images of nebulae such as these:

http://astro.uchicago.edu/~grodnick/gallery/nebulae/r259c2f524.gif

http://astro.uchicago.edu/~grodnick/gallery/nebulae/r211c3f288.gif

You're quite right, and my miliary TB argument rather falls down - although Matthew / Sergei's original one about plain tuberculosis is still viable.

The only thing that gives me hope is that wikipedia claims that:

"Originally nebula was a general name for any extended astronomical object, including galaxies beyond the Milky Way (some examples of the older usage survive; for example, the Andromeda Galaxy is sometimes referred to as the Andromeda Nebula )."

If that's the case, and if the old usage would have been current at the time of writing of PF, the miliary TB argument might stand up - but that's getting too tenous, I think.

Nick.

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