BY T. HARVEY JOHNSTON AND J. HUKTON CLELAND. 511 



hieniatozoa have been found in the blood. The disease is 

 popularly, and perhaps rightly, considered to be due to the slow 

 action of some vegetable poison. 



Tlie loss of blood from these little tumours seems considerable, 

 and a secondary ansemia is the natural consequence. On examin- 

 ing blood-slides from two comparatively early cases in which we 

 were enabled to hold post mortems, the number of red cells with 

 basophile granulations was striking. In the first case, a per- 

 centage of about ten were found to contain these, but they were 

 less numerous in the second case. The granules appeared as 

 minute dots, thirty or more in number, uniformly peppering the 

 corpuscle, as fewer but larger very short rods, or as still fewer 

 (about 8 to 10) irregular bodies. The cells containing the many 

 minute dots were usually polychromatophilic, while those with 

 larger bodies were normal in tint. Occasionally unaffected red 

 cells were similarly polychromatophilic. 



In addition to these basophile granulations, red cells with 

 nuclei whole or partly disintegrated and absorbed, could be found 

 without difficulty. In all these the nuclei or their remains were 

 stained a deepish purple. The cells with large whole nuclei 

 were usually polychromatophilic. All stages were seen between 

 such nuclei, occupying about two-thirds of the corpuscle, and small 

 often somewhat eccentric deep round purple bodies. Further, 

 other instances were seen in which a large nucleus was irregu- 

 larly broken up into several irregular masses still in connection 

 with each other, and these were likewise of various sizes. 



The basophilic bodies are probably the " chromo-linin granula- 

 tions," described by C. E. Walker,(6) in the red corpuscles of 

 mammals (Trans. Path. Soc. Lond. Iviii. 1907, p. 99), evenly dis- 

 tributed throughout the corpuscle. As he points out, these are 

 almost certainly the remains of nuclear matter, and cells contain- 

 ing them can be met with in normal bone-marrow, though they 

 do not appear in the blood under ordinary conditions. When, 

 however, there is a drain upon the blood-system, as in anaemias 

 of various origin, these cells as well as nucleated red cells, with 

 nuclei complete or partially disintegrated, may, in the hurry to 



