68 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



ances to be found in starch, indicative of a coalescence 

 of its particles, as are presented by the several forms 

 of carbonate of lime, whether prepared artificially or 

 occurring in organized tissues.' 



Other substances, such as leucine, found in animal 

 fluids, appear as minute hyaline bodies which exhibit 

 concentric markings — although they yield no colour re- 

 actions with the polariscope. I have frequently seen, 

 in drops of blood taken from persons suffering from 

 various diseases, bodies almost similar in appearance 

 and about t^qo'' in diameter, which probably had an 

 albuminoid constitution. In other cases irregular ag- 

 gregations of various sizes, composed of rounded bodies 

 presenting no concentric markings, have been met 

 with; and these I have been in the habit of re- 

 garding as insoluble modifications of an albuminoid 

 substance, which had probably been reduced to this 

 state by reason of some molecular rearrangements 

 that had taken place in the dissolved materials of the 

 fluid from which they have been derived. A change 

 might easily occur whereby the previously soluble com- 

 pound becomes no longer soluble ; and then, as it 

 appears, it may separate from the blood and grow in 

 the form of rounded masses. And these forms are just 

 as much the expression of its resultant molecular attrac- 

 tions as the intersecting fibres of fibrine which separate ^ 



^ The process may be watched in a drop of the blood beneath the 

 microscope ; and all the more easily if the specimen has been taken from 

 the finger of a person suffering from rheumatic fever. 



