84 PREPARATION AND STUDY OF HEMOGLOBIN CRYSTALS 



accident. His chief method, still in use and known as "Funke's method," 

 is most simple and very satisfactory for bloods that are readily crystalliz- 

 able. Funke prepared crystals from the blood of man, the horse, bullock, 

 dog, fish, cat, pig, and pigeon. He states that if some water is added to 

 a drop of blood (which in consequence of free evaporation has already 

 begun to dry) spread out on an object-glass, and the edges of the prepara- 

 tions are observed, it can be seen that the corpuscles suddenly change. 

 While some of the blood corpuscles vanish the others acquire dark, thick 

 outlines, become angular, and develop into small, sharply defined rods. 

 In this way are formed an enormous number of crystals which are too small 

 to have their form accurately ascertained. These crystals quickly increase 

 in length, while their diameter remains unchanged or increases only slightly, 

 and finally the whole field is a thick network of needle-shaped crystals 

 crossing in all directions. This process goes on so extraordinarily quickly 

 that it is difficult to follow with the eye the first formation, as well as the 

 steps of gradual development, on which account, he states, he could not 

 convince himself that the crystals really arise from the corpuscles themselves. 

 The whole phenomenon, he writes, can be most beautifully observed if the 

 cover-glass is shifted after water has been added to the concentrated drop 

 of blood, and then those places observed where before, on the edges of the 

 cover-glass, thicker layers of blood were in the process of drying. 



Occasionally crystals form in clots of splenic venous blood upon evapo- 

 ration, but in this way there arise very incomplete crystalline formations, 

 ordinarily a small row of pale-red leaflets or rods arranged palisade-like, 

 without any recognizable ciystal form. 



When a drop of blood is mixed with ether it changes almost at once 

 into an entangled heap of scale-shaped and leaf-shaped crystals, which are 

 suspended in a homogeneous fluid. By the addition of alcohol Funke 

 succeeded in producing crystals of so enormous a size that they could be 

 recognized by the naked eye, although for the most part the crystals were 

 badly formed. During the first minute, he states, the alcohol coagulated 

 the blood to thick red clots. After evaporation, however, there appeared 

 in isolated spots long, broad, sword-shaped leaves of intense red color, 

 with irregular, often saw-shaped and indented, splintered ends. Only a 

 few of the crystals were 4-sided prisms. 



Funke made measurements of the angles of the crystals by the aid of 

 a goniometer; but upon insufficient data he accredits the crystals to certain 

 systems. He noted that the forms and solubilities of the crystals of dif- 

 ferent species are not alike, and therefore that species may thus be differ- 

 entiated. (See Chapter VII.) He also noted that, in the bloods of the three 

 species of fish examined, all of the corpuscles changed into crystalline form, 

 and that upon the addition of water a great part of them were changed 

 I nick to corpuscles under the eye of the observer. 



The foregoing investigations, especially those of Funke, because of his 

 being the first to prepare blood crystals, may justly be regarded as consti- 

 tuting the foundation for the rational study of hemoglobin. At that time 

 (1851-2) the precise nature of the substance of the crystals was unknown. 



