PKOGKESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 93 



or three times as large. In blood prcj)arations of syphilitic patients 

 the following changes take place, beginning from the fourth day. In 

 the yellowish-coloured plasma there apj^ears a cloudy opacity, which 

 is due to the presence of small flakes. These latter are seen to con- 

 tain extremely small spherical bright granules, which generally pos- 

 sess a filamentous appendix. The fifth day the number of these 

 granules becoiaes much greater ; they become much larger, perfectly 

 bright, spherical or irregular-shaped, whereas at the same time the 

 filamentous appendix disappears. These granules make their ap- 

 pearance all over preparations ; they are not limited to certain foci. 

 The most of them are to be foimd on those places in which the plasma 

 is still unclosed. There exists some difference, however, as regards 

 the time in which these granules appear ; in some of the preparations 

 taken from the same patient at exactly the same time, they come into 

 view, some on the fourth, others from the fifth to the seventh day, 

 others still later and, in a limited number, or, lastly, not at all. After 

 the twelfth day, up to which time their number has increased im- 

 mensely, no material change can be made out, even w]) to the twentieth 

 day, except that some become a little larger, brighter, and more 

 sharply outlined. In preparations of the blood of patients suffering 

 from different diseases (endocarditis, acute rheumatism, Addison's 

 disease, gout, jaundice, pneumonia, tuberculosis, variola, puerperal 

 peritonitis, sei)ticfemia), the above-described corpuscles make their 

 appearance only in an extremely limited number. Consequently, a 

 preparation of blood which contains only a few of those corpiiscles is 

 unavailable for a diagnosis ; whereas a preparation that contains a 

 great number of them can be said to have been taken from a syphilitic 

 patient. Biesiadecki succeeded in this resj^ect, just as Lostorfer, in 

 being able to point out in a series of mixed preparations, submitted to 

 him and prepared in the above-mentioned manner, which of them had 

 been taken from syphilitic patients, and which not ; except in one 

 preparation, in which Lostorfer's corpuscles were present abun- 

 dantly, and which was taken from a patient suffering from pustula 

 maligna ; it could not be ascertained, however, whether this patient 

 did not suffer from syphilis. Biesiadecki does not agree with Los- 

 torfer in his assertion, that the corpuscles in question become vacuo- 

 lated after a certain lapse of time, having been able to find such vacuo- 

 lated bodies in syphilitic blood as well as in the blood of the small- 

 pox already on the second or third day. Biesiadecki regards them as 

 residua of coloured blood-disks, and not as transformed syphilis cor- 

 puscles. Biesiadecki shows that these latter are not fat, not sarcina, 

 not granules of colourless corpuscles, and not fungi, as Lostorfer was 

 inclined to assume, but that they are granules of precipitated paraglo- 

 bulin ; for a, if a ciu'rent of carbonic acid be allowed to pass through 

 a preparation of diluted semm (plasma ? — Bep.) of a dog, similar cor- 

 puscles to those above described make their appearance ; on rej^lacing 

 carbonic acid by oxygen they disappear ; h, if through a blood pre- 

 j)aration, in which numerous syphilis corpuscles have developed, 

 a current of oxygen be allowed to pass, the small ones disappear, 

 whereas the larger ones diminish considerably in size ; r, the syphilis 



