600 



ports to present not only the present state of knowledge but also the 

 history of the subject, Dr. Weidenreich, although fully recording his 

 own observations, has abstained from mentioning the fact that they 

 had almost without exception been long anticipated. 



In drawing attention to this circumstance I do not desire to 

 claim merit for the discovery of the existence and nature of the 

 erythrocyte membrane, which were already established by facts which 

 had been recorded by previous histologists. My task was merely 

 that of collating these facts and observations and adducing others 

 which seemed to me to support the conclusions to which they 

 point. But with regard to the fatty or myelinic nature of the mem- 

 brane I do desire to claim priority for Norris, whose experi- 

 ments and observations on this subject have been entirely ignored. 

 Norris not only proved that the blood corpuscles must be regarded 

 as invested by a surface film of a material not miscible with water, 

 but also concluded for the myelinic nature of that film, and ascribed 

 to this the flattened form of the corpuscle; which he regarded as a 

 liquid particle or droplet enclosed by a myelinic pellicle^). Ho pointed 

 out that although such a droplet would, if enclosed by mere fatty 

 substance, inevitably take on a globular form, yet if the enclosing 

 substance contained myelin the form assumed would be discoid. 



Norris' observations may have been discredited because he fell 

 into the error of describing decolorized erythrocytes as a special cor- 

 puscular element of the blood. But this fact need not blind us to his 

 merits as the real discoverer of the cause of the formerly obscure 

 phenomena of discoid shape and of rouleau -formation. There is no 

 reference in Dr. Weidenreich's "Ergebniss" to any of Norris' observ- 

 ations, although some of them at least were completely accessible 

 to every body, having been published in the Proceedings of the 

 Royal Society. Dr. Weidenreich must have been aware of these 

 observations, for they are referred to in the volume of Quain's 

 Anatomy which was in his possession; nevertheless all the credit is 

 ascribed to others, whose researches although doubtless independent 

 were made long subsequently. 



Norris was certainly the first to arrive at a true comprehension 

 of the nature of the external pellicle of the erythrocyte, and this fact 

 cannot be properly ignored in any historical resume of the subject 

 such as that which Dr. Weidenreich has recently published. 



1) Norris, The Physiology and Pathology of the Blood, London 

 1882, p. 32. 



