144 An Account of certain Organisms 



of the coloured elements, examined the supernatant serum, in which 

 he found, in extraordinary numbers, small, round, colourless cor- 

 puscles with weak contours, to which he gave the name of " elemen- 

 tary corpuscles." These he met with in human blood both in 

 health and disease, and in the blood of the luwer animals ; and he 

 found gradations between the smaller (always colourless) forms 

 and full-sized red corpuscles. He gives measurements (for the 

 smaller ones, from joVoth to ^ J-g^th of a line ; the largest, -g-^Trth to 

 :i^th of a line), and speaks of them also as occurring in clumps 

 and groups of globules. It is clear, on reading his account, that in 

 part, at any rate, he refers to the corpuscles above described. 

 Gradations such as he noticed between these and the coloured 

 elements I have never met with, and undoubtedly he was deaUng 

 with the latter in a fpartially decolourized condition. Lostorfer's * 

 corpuscles, which attracted such attention a few years ago, from the 

 assertion of the discoverer that they were peculiar to the blood of 

 syphilitic patients, require for their production an artificial culture 

 in the moist chamber, extending over several days. They appear 

 first after two or three days, or even sooner, as small bright cor- 

 puscles, partly at rest, partly in motion, which continue to increase 

 in size, till by the sixth or seventh day they have obtained the 

 diameter of a red corpuscle, and may possess numerous processes or 

 contain vacuoles in their interior. Blood from healthy individuals, 

 as well as from diseases other than syphilis, has been shown to yield 

 these corpuscles ; and the general opinion at present held of them is 

 that they are of an albuminoid nature. 



The question at once most naturally arose. How is it possible 

 for such masses, some measuring even 4noth of an inch, to pass 

 through the capillaries, unless supposed to possess a degree of 

 extensibility and elasticity, such as their composition hardly 

 warranted attributing to them ? Neither Max Schultze nor Kiess 

 offer any suggestion on this point, though the latter thinks that 

 they might, under some conditions, produce embolism. 



During the examination of a portion of loose connective tissue 

 from the back of a young rat, in a large vein which happened to be 

 in the specimen, these same corpuscles were seen, not, however, 

 aggregated together, but isolated and single among the blood-cor- 

 puscles (Fig. 8) ; and repeated observations demonstrated the fact 

 that in a drop of blood taken from one of these young animals, the 

 corpuscles were always to be found accumulated together ; while on 

 the other hand, in the vessels (whether veins, arteries, or capil- 

 laries) of the same rat they were always present as separate elements 

 showing no tendency to adhere to one another. The masses, then, 



* 'Wiener mod. Presse,' 1872, p. 93. 'Wiener med. Wochenschrift,' 1872, 

 No. 8. Article in Archiv f. Dermatolog., 1872. 



