4 i8 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



believe the poverty of chromocytes is apparent rather than 

 real, and that the blood is rich in plasma rather than poor 

 in red corpuscles, i.e., is polyplasmia The plasma itself is 

 under these circumstances not deficient in solids. In 

 lymphatic leukcemia, where lymphocytes are in excess in 

 the blood, the large hyaline cells are usually quite scanty. 



III. The Finely Granular Oxyphil Cell. 



Wharton Jones was the first (in 1841) to draw attention 

 to the granules existing" within leucocytes (5). After es- 

 tablishment of the view that a living animal cell consists 

 structurally of a spongy reticulum of protoplasm containing 

 less active material, paraplasm, in its meshes, Heidenhain 

 and Langley early demonstrated and worked out the details 

 of the periodic granularity of secreting cells (6). They 

 showed that in such cells activity is commonly associated 

 with more or less continuous storage, and with more or less 

 intermittent discharge of material elaborated in the form of 

 granules by the living network of the cell-body. Among 

 the followers of these investigators have been Ehrlich (7) 

 and, later, Altmann (8). The latter has passed from some- 

 what slender premises to the speculation that a discrete 

 granule is the elementary unit of all biological structure, 

 and that every cell is a colony of such " elementar or- 

 ganismen," just as the body of a metazoon is a colony of 

 cells. These elemental bioplasts, if aggregated into cells, 

 he terms cytoblasts ; if free, the bioplasts are autoblasts ; 

 micrococci, it is urged, are autoblasts, the granules of the 

 leucocyte, cytoblasts. But Altmann has not added much 

 solid fact to the subject. On the other hand Ehrlich has 

 added considerably. The latter has elaborated a scheme 

 of microchemical tests for the granules of the various cells 

 observed. According to Ehrlich, the staining solutions 

 used in histology may be considered in two groups: (1) 

 acid solutions, (2) basic solutions. In "acid" solutions the 

 staining principle is the acid although the dye may be a 

 chemically neutral salt ; tinctorially it reacts as a free acid. 

 Ehrlich's scheme of examination rests on determining 

 whether a cell-granule can be stained by acid colours more 



