130 PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



York Medical Journal ' for November last. The colour of the venous 

 blood was purplish, between that of arterial and venous blood. When 

 a drop of blood was allowed to fall upon a sheet of white bibulous 

 paper, a central bright-red spot remained, with a surrounding bright 

 areola of serum. The blood coagulated very slowly, and formed a 

 large, loose coagulum, which contracted slowly and imperfectly. 

 Thus in a one-thousand-grain specific gravity bottle, the coagulum 

 filled the whole bottle, and from this amount of blood not more than 

 150 grains of golden-coloured serum could be collected at the end of 

 forty-eight hours. The blood corpuscles tended to rapid dissolution 

 in the serum, and, upon standing, the serum changed from this cause 

 to a bright red. The reaction of the blood was carefully determined 

 as it flowed from the vein, and found to be alkaline. I regarded this 

 observation with interest, as, in several cases in which I had abstracted 

 blood from the cavities of the heart, after death, it gave a decided acid 

 reaction ; but the present observation would seem to show that the 

 acid reaction was due to post-mortem changes. Immediately after its 

 abstraction, the blood was subjected to a rigid microscopical examina- 

 tion. Under a magnifying power of one-fifth of an inch (Smith and 

 Beck, London), many of the blood corpuscles presented an irregular, 

 stellated outline. When received under high magnifying powers, as 

 the Y^^th-inch immersion lens of G. and S. Merz, of Germany, with 

 eye-glasses to magnify 1050 diameters, the crenated and stellated 

 blood corpuscles were found to be studded upon the surface, all over, 

 with nodular, rounded projections. The coloured blood corpuscles 

 appeared to be undergoing changes of form, as if irregular transuda- 

 tions of the globulin were forming upon the surface. These changes 

 were most marked and frequent upon the surface and outer portions 

 of the clots, and resembled, in some respects, the amoeboid movements 

 of the colom-less corpuscles ; the nodules, however, were uniformly 

 diffused over the surface of the corpuscles. When the blood was ex- 

 amined from the interior of the clot, the corpuscles were found con- 

 glomerated together, forming rolls or piles, adhering together by their 

 flat surfaces, like the rouleaux of the blood of inflammatory diseases, 

 and of the horse. The corpuscles which had been joined and aggluti- 

 nated together by their flat surfaces, were normal in shape, and pre- 

 sented no stellated or nodulated outline, as was the case with the 

 corpuscles from the surface of the clot, and from the surrounding 

 golden-coloured serum. It appeared as if the exudation forming the 

 nodules upon the free-coloured blood corpuscles had formed the band 

 of cement between the opposing surfaces. Upon standing for twenty- 

 four hours and longer, the coloured corpuscles tended to dissolve and 

 lose their outline, and the serum became coloured from the escape of 

 the colouring matter of the red globules. The coloured corpuscles 

 appeared to be acted upon and altered by the urea and bile, which 

 chemical analysis revealed in considerable amount in the serum. 

 After standing in an open beaker glass, or in porcelain capsules, for 

 forty-eight hours, numerous fibres made their appearance, as in other 

 putrefying animal fluids, as blood and albuminous urine and serous 

 exudations. But no living animalcule, or vegetable cells, or sporules. 



