86 PREPARATION AND STUDY OF HEMOGLOBIN CRYSTALS 



guinea-pig, and man. He obtained crystals by Funke's method, and also 

 by allowing the blood to stand in an open vessel exposed to light at a tem- 

 perature of 60 to 70 F. to putrefy. He found that at any time after 48 

 hours a drop of this blood would yield by slight evaporation, without 

 added water, the most beautiful crystals. He states that those of sturgeon's 

 blood are hexagonal columns and tablets; that their color may be washed 

 out with alcohol and water without injury to their form, and that the 

 decolorized crystals may be dissolved in water and again obtained devoid 

 of color, but unchanged in crystalline shape. Crystals in the form of hex- 

 agonal plates were frequently seen "within the envelope of the corpuscles." 

 When a glass slide containing a group of crystals was kept for some months, 

 the crystals were altered in their color so as to exhibit beautiful tints, such 

 as yellow, orange, purple, and various shades of green, recalling "very 

 strikingly the alterations of tint undergone by the leaf in the autumn." 

 Dr. Mitchell found that the crystals are of the same form from whatever 

 part of the body they are obtained; but he also makes a note of the fact 

 that Dr. Johnson obtained tetrahedral forms from the splenic blood of the 

 opossum but rhombic crystals from the blood of other vessels. He also 

 observed that human blood of the male, the female, the fetus, and the 

 placenta, and the blood in many diseased conditions, such as dysenteiy, 

 measles, cholera, typhoid fever, yellow fever, pneumonia, etc., give in each 

 case the same form of blood crystal. 



Bottcher (Preyer, Die Blutkrystalle, Dorpat, 1871, 14; Archiv f. path. 

 Anat. u. Physiologic, 1863, xxvn, 465) prepared crystals from the blood 

 of dogs, cats, and other animals by anesthetizing the animals, then inject- 

 ing cold water into the veins, and finally killing with chloroform. The 

 blood was diluted with an equal volume of water and subjected to a tem- 

 perature kept down to freezing-point for two days. 



Schmidt (Archiv f. path. Anat. und Physiologie, 1863, xxvii, 465) 

 analyzed crystals of dog's blood that had been dried at 110 C. He gives 

 the following figures: 



C53-64H7. 11 N 16 . 19 So-66020-03Fe .43 



also alkali and alkaline earth (0.04 per cent) and phosphoric acid (0.91 per 

 cent), which latter shows that he had a very impure preparation. 



Rollett (Verstiche u. Beobachtungen am Blut, etc., Wien, 1862; 

 Sitzungsberichte d. math.-natur. Classe d. Kaiser. Akad. d. Wissensch., 

 Wien, 1862, XLVI, Abth. 2, 85) studied, with the help of von Lang, the crys- 

 tallographic and optical characters of the blood crystals. Rollett prepared 

 crystals from the bloods of the guinea-pig, squirrel, cat, man, rabbit, pig, 

 and frog. Crystals from man, the rabbit, dog, cat, and guinea-pig they 

 describe as belonging to the rhombic system, while those of the squirrel 

 they assign to the hexagonal system. Rollett made use of several means of 

 Inking the blood to facilitate crystallization, which will be found referred 

 to in other pages. Von Wittich (Konigsberger medicinische Jahrbiicher, 

 1862, in, 332) obtained crystals from the blood of the rat, guinea-pig, and 

 dog by breaking down the corpuscles with ether, but he did not succeed 

 with the blood of man, rabbit, chicken, or frog. 



