120 FALLACIES AND PUZZLES IN HLOOll EXAMINATION 



liave probably assuniefl these shapes as the result of the spreading of the film. Plate VI., 

 tig. 7a, shows another curious appearance due to this cause and which the inexperienced 

 might mistake for a parasite. So-called haamoglobin drops are also met with in birds' 

 Corps en blood. They look like human red cells. Again the corps en pessaire and corps en annean 



ptssaiie ^j ^j^g French authors, Plate VI., figs. 4 and 8, are not always correctly diagnosed by the 



student of the blood of malarial cachectics though their colour should prove their source. 

 Fragile red cells assuming half-moon and other peculiar shapes are apt to be confusing. 

 I have seen them in chronic malaria (Plate VI., fig. 13). 



When one encounters endoglobular and aua;mic degeneration of red cells with a deposit 

 of blue stain at their centres one may go wrong and think of malaria or a new hsematozoon, 

 but the absence of chromatin and the general distribution of the stain are distinctive. 

 There is more reason for granular or bacillary-like basophilia (Plate VII., fig. 5), especially 

 when associated with polychromasia, leading one astray. Basophilia is very common 

 in the blood of all kinds of rats, and, indeed, some persons think that certain 

 so-called basophilias are not histological changes at all but are due to parasitic 

 invasion. For instance, Graham-Smith, in 1905, described bacillary-like bodies with 

 protozoal staining reactions in the red cells of the mole. These are not at all unlike the rod 

 forms I found in the jerboa and which Laveran assured me merely represented basophilia. 

 The latter, however, do not usually stain blue with Eomanowsky, and in cases of this 

 kind the tinctorial reactions are of the greatest service in arriving at a diagnosis. They 

 may, however, do so. There are also different kinds of granules. Naegeli's azurephil 

 granules, which are probably due to degenerative changes in old erythrocytes, are quite 

 distinct from what Ferrata calls the true blue basophilic punctations which have a 

 regenerative significance and consist of what Pappenheim calls parachromatin, a 

 substance allied to the chromatin of which the Jolly bodies (vide page 121) are composed. 

 Mention may also be made of Cabot's ring bodies which are rare and occur in 

 acute, large lymphocyte leukaemia and pernicious anaemia. They stain red both with 

 Romanowsky and with methyl-green-pyronin. Sometimes true basophile granules may 

 be very large like those met with in embryonal blood. Eecent work on staining 

 the living blood has led to the discovery of the granular-filamentous substance of 

 Cesaris-Demel and his metachromatic-granular material, but in ordinary blood work 

 consideration of these can, I think, be discarded so far as our present point of view is 

 concerned. It is worth noting that the Maurer and Schuffner dot phenomena of malaria 

 are placed in a special class by Pappenheim. 

 Curious Plate VII., fig. 7, shows an appearance noted in a polychromatophilic red cell from 



appearance in ^ irerbil which had been inoculated with finger blood from a relapse case of human 



gerbil's blood " , t • , t ■,> , . 



spirochaitosis but which never showed infection. It will be seen there was a curious 

 chromatin streak which ends in a kind of short fiagellum, running down the centre of 

 the corpuscle. What is this? I confess I do not know, but think it must be a stain 

 deposit in a corpuscular split or crack. It w-as the only thing of the kind in the film. 

 It is probably allied to the ring and figure-of-eight bodies {corps en anneau) mentioned 

 by Schleif, Webster, Brumpt and others, or to the intra-corpuscular polychromatophilic 

 filaments known to occur in red cells (Plate VI., fig. 5). 



Very frequently in the blood of rodents, especially rats and guinea-pigs, stained by the 

 Leishman or Giemsa methods, one encounters little spherical chromatin dots in the 

 red cells, recalling in all but position the marginal dots [Anaplasma marginale), Plate VI., 

 fig. 12, of Theiler, now said to be the parasite of gall-sickness in cattle in South Africa. 

 To the best of my knowledge, one may search in vain through English books for any 



