364 Miscellaneous. 



times more opake, than the pale globules of healthy blood ; and the 

 globules occurring in disease are frequently clustered together very 

 remarkably ; they are sometimes of a reddish colour, including from 

 one to four blood-discs, rarely five or six, in a very delicate and pale 

 envelope. Besides, in the pus-like globules of the blood of patients 

 labouring under inflammatory disease, the molecules composing the 

 nucleus are mostly surrounded, and often more or less separated, by 

 a quantity of minutely granular matter, which is either generally 

 less obvious, or even absent, in the pale globules of healthy blood, 

 as is shown by the illustrative figures. 



In a case of great swelling with purulent deposits in the leg of a 

 mare, the pus-like globules of the blood presented an average dia- 

 meter of 2?TBTT tn °f an mcn > ana " were nearly as numerous as the red 

 discs ; while in the blood of a healthy mare, examined at the same 

 time for comparison, the pus-like globules were by no means so 

 plentiful, and they almost all ranged between ^jq o tn an( * S 3o"o tn °^ 

 an inch. — From Mr. Gulliver's Contributions to Minute Anatomy, 

 London and Edinb. Philos. Magazine for September 1842. 



ORIGIN OF FIBRE. STRUCTURE OF F1BRINE AND OF FALSE 



MEMBRANES. 



Since the researches of Schwann, the origin of fibre, and of all the 

 tissues, has been ascribed to the growth of cells ; but it becomes 

 questionable whether cells are essential to the formation of all tex- 

 tures, since fibrils, which may be the primordial fibres of certain parts, 

 are formed in a few minutes in fibrine by the mere act of coagula- 

 tion. 



" Mr. Gerber (Gen. Anatomy, fig. 16-18.) has delineated what he 

 terms the first, second, and complete stages of fibrillation in the 

 fibrine composing coagulable lymph ; but he does not say how much 

 his drawings are magnified, though in some of them a very low power 

 must have been employed. Others are sufficiently enlarged to show 

 the cells from which he says the fibres are formed ; and this is pre- 

 cisely the point in which my observations are at issue with the 

 views now generally entertained concerning the origin of fibre. 



" ' All the organic tissues,' says Dr. Schwann, ' however different 

 they may be, have one common principle of development as their 

 basis, viz. the formation of cells ; that is to say, nature never unites 

 molecules immediately into a fibre, a tube, and so forth, but she 

 always in the first instance forms a round cell, or changes, when it 

 is requisite, the cells into the various primary tissues as they present 

 themselves in the adult state.' 



" How," adds Mr. Gulliver, " is the origin of the fibrils which I 

 have depicted in so many varieties of fibrine to be reconciled with 

 this doctrine ? And what is the proof that these fibrils may not be 

 the primordial fibres of animal textures ? I could never see any sa- 

 tisfactory evidence that the fibrils of fibrine are changed cells ; and 

 indeed in many cases the fibrils are formed so quickly after coagula- 

 tion, that their production, according to the views of the eminent 

 physiologist just quoted, would hardly seem possible. Nor have I 



