599 



and in their solubilities resemble fats, is accountable for the following 

 reactions : 



a) the changes in the corpuscle which are produced by heat, which are 

 due to the softening and eventually to the melting of the "myelin" ; 



b) the "laking" action of ether, alcohol, chloroform, alkalies, bile 

 salts and other solvents of fat and myelin ; 



c) the peculiar staining with osmic acid; 



d) the running of the corpuscles into rouleaux. 



The last reaction especially renders it probable that the lecithin 

 and Cholesterin occur chiefly if not exclusively in a superficial stratum 

 of the membrane, so that this must be regarded as formed of two 

 components, the main part being nucleo-proteid,the superficial film myelin. 



Postscript. The conclusions arrived at in this paper regarding 

 the existence of a membrane to the erythrocyte as well as the che- 

 mical composition of that membrane and the arguments which have 

 led up to these conclusions were, as has been seen, for the most part set 

 forth in detail by the author in 1892—93, at which time the "stroma" 

 theory had been established during nearly thirty years and was uni- 

 versally accepted by histologists. Since 1893 the same conclusions 

 backed by similar arguments have been gradually arrived at by many 

 writers upon the subject, amongst whom may be especially mentioned 

 KoEPPE , GiGLio - Tos, L. Hermann and Albrecht ; none of whom 

 appear to have been aware that the conclusions to which they had 

 come had already been formulated and the arguments by which they 

 had been led to these conclusions had already been employed in text- 

 books to which they were not likely to have had access. Clearly no 

 blame is to be imputed to authors who do not refer to work by their 

 predecessors in the same field when such work has been inaccessible 

 to them. 



This excuse cannot however be alleged by the latest writer upon 

 this subject, Dr. Franz Weidenreich of Strassburg, author of an 

 article which has recently appeared in Merkel and Bonnet's Ergebnisse 

 der Anatomie, Bd. 13, 1904, entitled "Die roten Blutkörperchen, I." 

 Dr. Weidenreich, when he wrote this article, was fully aware that all 

 the arguments which he has used in it to prove the existence and the 

 nature of the membrane of the erythrocyte had been employed more 

 than ten years previously, for he has had in his possession since 

 February 1903 a copy (reprinted in 1898 but without any alteration 

 so far as this matter is concerned) of the 1893 edition of Quain's 

 Anatomy containing the paragraphs which have been quoted in the 

 foregoing paper. Nevertheless, in the article mentioned, which pur- 



