De. Anderson on the state in which Fibrin exists in the Blood. 205 



bling the molecules of the blood, rather than with the chyle globules 

 which Gulliver describes,* though no doubt these may in certain 

 cases exist. Dr. Andrew Buchananf has discovered a method of 

 separating this albuminous matter, and causing it to float on the sur- 

 face of the fluid, when it puts on all the appearance of the amorphous 

 substance found in what HodgkinJ calls the nonplastic serous effu- 

 sion. Do such effusions depend on the superabundance of this 

 matter in the blood, as the more plastic forms are owing to increase 

 in the coagulable fibrin, and is the well known action of mercury in 

 making the plastic become the aplastic eff'usion, owing to some ** re- 

 ducing" action by which it tends to make the protein compounds of 

 the blood less fibrinous, and more like common albumen ? 



It is evident that in the blood we have several forms of these com- 

 pounds, deserving of much separate investigation, as : — 



1. Albumen — coagulable by heating the serum. 



2. " Serolin " remaining in the solution, mixed with urea, salts, &c. 

 — and which Mulder, with what truth I know not, avers§ to be a trit- 

 oxide of protein. 



3. Fibrin — procured by agitating fresh blood. 



4. White molecules — procurable by Dr. Buchanan's method from 

 •' milky" serum. 



5. White corpuscles — probably procurable by a like method from 

 the yet fluid buffy coat. 



6. Hematosin dissolved out by water from the red globules. 



7. " Globulin," or the coats and nuclei of these globules, which sub- 

 side to the bottom when hematosin remains dissolved. 



All these substances must be separately analysed, if we would per- 

 fect our knowledge of the blood : but it were an error to fancy that 

 they must needs be exactly the same in all cases — even if in the same 

 way procured. Mulderj tells us that the buffy coat is not pure 

 fibrin, but a mixture of the deutoxide and tritoxide of protein : I 

 cannot tell how this may be ; but I know that it is not in the globules 

 alone that we find a varying attractive or cohesive power. In in- 

 flammation, as Jones has shown,** the mutual attraction of the 

 red corpuscles is increased, so that they withdraw from the floating 

 plasma ; but the solidifying fibrin of that plasma contracts too with a 

 varying power : in sthenic inflammation, when the system is otherwise 

 in health, the coagulum shrinks during many hours, and the buffy 

 coat forms a tough leathery covering to the clot. In asthenic or 

 specify inflammation, as for example in the "ophthalmitis post- 

 febrilis,"t+ occurring as a too frequent sequela of the fever lately 

 epidemic in Glasgow, we have still the increased formation of fibrin 

 and wliito corpuscles, still the greater mutual attraction of the red 

 globules, and still the buffy coat ; but it does not contract much, but 



* Notes to Gerber's Anat. f See his Paper forming Article L. of this Vol. 



X On Serous Membranes. § Annalen der Ch. und Ph. 1843. || Loc. cit. 



*• See above. tt Mackenzie. 



