225 



corpuscles that have been retarded in their passage, there can 

 be little doubt that the corpuscles actually multiply in num- 

 ber in the clot that is formed."^ This fact of the increase of 

 the white blood-corpuscles has been overlooked in conse- 

 quence of the examination not having been conducted with 

 sufficient care, and with powers of low magnifying power. 



The capillary vessel of an inflamed part being distended, 

 its walls consequently become much reduced in thickness, 

 and little longitudinal rents or fissures are here and there 

 produced. Through these serum, holding in suspension very 

 minute bioplasts detached from the larger ones growing and 

 multiplying in the vessel, pass. Having thus extravasated, 

 these particles, resulting directly from the subdivision of the 

 white blood-corpuscles, make their way into the interstices 

 of the surrounding tissues, and being nearly stationary, and 

 abundantly supplied with nutrient pabulum, grow and mul- 

 tiply in the new locality, and at an increasing rate. The 

 phenomena here described will be understood if fig. 7, PI. XIV, 

 be carefully examined. This has been copied from a prepara- 

 tion which Avas preserved in the year 1863. But the facts 

 demonstrated were well known to me, and Avere described in 

 my lectures before 1863, and were particularly referred to in 

 a paper presented by me to the Royal Microscopical Society in 

 that year. I did not come to the conclusion which has been 

 recently advocated by Cohnheim, that an individual white 

 blood-corpuscle passed through the wall of the vessel, and 

 then changed its characters and became a pus corpuscle ; but 

 my observations led me to infer — and of the correctness of 

 the conclusion I am fully satisfied — that the particles of ger- 

 minal or living matter seen in such great numbers outside 

 the vessels in many cases of inflammation at an early stage, 

 result principally from the growth, division, and subdivision 

 of minute particles of germinal matter which have passed 

 through the vascular wall suspended in the fluid exuda- 

 tion. These masses of germinal matter (fig. 7, PI. XIV) 

 are the descendants of Avhite blood- corpuscles, but they are 

 not the white blood-corpuscles themselves Avhich were pre- 

 viously in the blood, and which were circulating in that 

 fluid. They may continue to grow and multiply like 

 other kinds of germinal matter, until at last that rapidly- 

 growing form of bioplasm, the common result of the greatly- 

 increased growth and multiplication of every form of bio- 

 plasm in the living body, may be produced. Thus the pus 

 corpuscle may be a descendant of the white blood-corpuscle, 



^ "On tlie Germinal Matter of the Blood, with Remarks upon the 

 Formation of Fibrin/' December 9th, 1863, ' Trans, of the Mic. Soc.' 

 VOL. X. NEW SER. Q 



