No. I.] BLOOD CORPUSCLES. yi 



ment with acetic or picric acid gave him peculiar red cor- 

 puscles which contained fragments or granules of what ap- 

 peared to be nuclear matter. These granules might be many 

 or few in number and varied greatly in size. He believed that 

 the cells represent the transitional forms between the white 

 and red corpuscles, and thought that they were more numerous 

 after a severe hemorrhage, during the period of regeneration 

 of the blood. In rabbits, moreover, after a starvation of seven 

 to nine days, the transitional forms could no longer be found. 

 His complete theory of the origin of the red corpuscles is as 

 follows. White corpuscles arise in the spleen and lymph 

 stream and get into the blood first as small uninucleated cells, 

 with a scanty cell substance. While circulating in the blood, 

 these leucocytes increase in size, the increase affecting both 

 the nucleus and the cytoplasm. The nucleus then begins to 

 fragment, and finally breaks up into granules, while haemoglobin 

 develops in the cell, making thus one of his transitional forms. 

 The fragments of nuclear matter gradually disappear ; the cell 

 becomes smaller and takes the shape of a normal red corpuscle. 

 The transitional forms of Erb can undoubtedly be found in 

 the circulation under certain conditions, but Erb was in error 

 in believing them to form an intermediate stage between the 

 ordinary white corpuscles of the blood and the red corpuscles. 

 Their real significance I shall describe later. A number of 

 other theories proposed during this period found but little sup- 

 port. For instance, Wharton Jones (i8) thought that the red 

 corpuscles are the liberated nuclei of the white corpuscles, but 

 seems to have had no stronger reason for this belief than an 

 alleged agreement in size. Gerlach, Funke, Schaffner, e/ a/., 

 taught that the red corpuscles are formed endogenously within 

 certain large colorless cells found in the spleen. But the cells 

 containing red corpuscles, which they found, and upon whicli 

 the theory was based, were afterwards shown by Kolliker to 

 be not the mother-cells of the red corpuscles, but, on the 

 contrary, their destroyers. At present, there can be no doubt 

 that the white corpuscles of the blood are never transformed 

 into red corpuscles, though it must be borne in mind that 

 this does not mean that the red corpuscles of the blood are 

 not derived from white or colorless cells. On the contrary, 

 as we shall see, it is now the general belief that the red cor- 



