162 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



At its conclusion, 



Dr. Neild said that Mr. Ralph had raised the question — ' 

 To wliat end? One might put the same question perhaps to 

 most of the investigations which, having been worked out, 

 had eventuated in remarkable practical beneJSt to the world 

 at large. One point which impressed him was, should we in 

 this way discover some method of treating those diseases in 

 which these molecular changes take place? Without doubt, 

 there was a very remarkable change in the corpuscles of the 

 blood in many of the diseases that had engaged the attention 

 of the medical profession and the scientific world generally, 

 many of which were practically hopeless of treatment. He 

 hoped that Mr. Ralph would attain the end at which he 

 aimed, and that one day he would be able to say, by 

 examination of the blood of a patient, from what particular 

 disease he was suffering, and to determine with mathe- 

 matical exactness what treatment to adopt. He was sure 

 that every credit would be given to Mr. Ralph for the 

 extraordinary industry and perseverance he had shown in 

 this matter. 



Dr. Jamieson said that the changes observed by Mr. Ralph, 

 were partly chemical and partly physical. He would have 

 been better pleased if Mr. Ralph had recognised more 

 specifically the fact that haemoglobin was simply a soluble 

 substance, capable of being crystallised and entering into 

 chemical compounds, oxydised and de-oxydised ; and, so far 

 as he understood our knowledge to go, w^as a substance 

 difiiised through the corpuscle, and capable of escaping from 

 the corpuscle into the liquid element of the blood. How far 

 the concentration of the diffiision could be regarded as being 

 due in any way to an independent action of the haemoglobin 

 itself, he had not been able to understand from the obser- 

 vations of Mr. Ralph, who seemed to speak of it as 

 something capable of undergoing or exercising active 

 changes, and not (as it seemed to him) as something 

 passively diffused, perhaps in the corpuscle itself, perhaps 

 round about it. He did not understand very well what 

 particular significance Mr. Ralph attached to the haemoglobin, 

 what he recognised it to be, or what influence it was supposed 

 to exert ; whether he considered it something different from 

 what it was generally supposed to be, viz., a chemical 

 substance, capable of solution in water, and probably diffiised 

 through the stroma of the red corpuscle. There was no 



