/ 1 CO V IMonthlv Microscopical 



V ^^^ ) LJournal, March 1. wm. 



PROGRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 



The Nature and Origin of Blood- fjlohules. — MM. A. Bechamp and 

 A. Estor have recently brought before the French Academy a paper on 

 this subject, which will be found in ' Ccmptes Eendus,' 7th Feb., 1870. 

 They remark that the blood-globules of man and the mammalia are 

 usually regarded as small elastic masses, in which there is neither 

 nucleus nor membrane. Deceived, they say, by their appearance 

 under the microscope, these globules are taken for simple homoge- 

 neous masses, and they offer what they consider a demonstration that 

 they are really masses of molecular granulations, agglutinated micro- 

 ferments (microzymas). They state that when blood is received directly 

 from the vessel which supplies it, in a glass containing alcohol (45^^), it 

 remains quite limpid, neither depositing fibrine nor globules. Soon, 

 however, the transparency of the fluid is diminished, and an abundant 

 deposit is found at the bottom of the vessel, which the microscope 

 shows to be composed almost exclusively of molecular granulations 

 free and mobile, or agglutinated. We can, they say, cultivate these 

 granulations and promote their rapid proliferation. To do this the 

 first mixture is thrown on a filter, the precipitate is retained, but some 

 micro-ferments always pass, which are so jirolific that at a temperature 

 of 25^ to 35° (C.) after a couple of hours another deposit takes place, 

 and after thirty-six hours it is as abundant as the first. The same 

 series of phenomena are repeated till the liquid has completely lost 

 its colour, and materials of nutrition are no longer supplied. The 

 experiment may be made with blood that has been beaten up and 

 defibrinized : so it is not the fibrine which furnishes the micro-fer- 

 ments ; they come from the globules, in which they may be found by 

 simple methods. 



The globules may be retained on the filter after a preliminary 

 action upon them of solution of sulphate of soda. They are then 

 placed on a glass slab and ground with a glass muller. By these 

 means the globules are torn, and the micro-ferments, set free, swim in 

 the liquid, with their proper oscillatory motion. 



This experiment may be varied by taking a drop of defibrinized 

 blood, and placing it under the microscope, when a mass of globules 

 will be seen, in which it is often difficult or impossible to find a single 

 micro-ferment. Let a drop of distilled water be placed so as to pass 

 under the glass cover of the object, and as it penetrates, the globules 

 grow pale, and then become granular, soon breaking up and leaving in 

 their place masses of very mobile micro-ferments, without a trace of 

 pre-existing membrane. 



The micro-ferments of blood behave like those of the liver in this 

 method of evolution, and like those of fibrine. For at first they can, 

 under certain circumstances, attach themselves together in chaplets 

 more or less li>ng. Placed in vials containing diluted starch creosoted, 

 w'ith or without addition of pure carbonate of lime, they rapidly 

 develop into bacteiia and bacterides. 



