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LXXXIII. Outlines of a Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature 

 and Properties of the Blood; being the Snbstajice of three 

 Lectures on that Subject delivered at the Gresham Institution 

 during Michaelmas Term 1826. By John Spurgin, M.D. 

 Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and of 

 the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 



[Continued from p. 370.] 



|UR knowledge, however, of the red globules, would be 

 extremely limited, were it not for the assistance of the mi- 

 croscope ; and although great discrepancy of information exists 

 among various mici'oscopic observers respecting them, still 

 they all agree in i-egarding them as organized bodies, having 

 different ingredients entering into their composition. Their 

 appearance before the microscope will be stated presently. 

 With regard to their chemical composition and chemical pro- 

 perties, the latest writers on this subject, and the latest compilers 

 of the sentiments of others, observe, that these bodies still re- 

 main the subject of controversy ; for although they have en- 

 gaged the attention of some of the most acute modern chemists, 

 the results obtained by them are so discordant, that no con- 

 sistent or decided conclusion can be deduced from them. The 

 oreatest reliance, though by no means an implicit one, is placed 

 on Berzelius, who spent so much time in this department of ani- 

 mal chemistry ; antl his conclusion is, that these particles do 

 not materially differ from the other parts of the blood, except 

 in their colour, and in the circumstance of a quantity of the 

 red oxide of iron being found among their ashes after com- 

 bustion. The presence of iron cannot be detected however, 

 by tlie most delicate test, previous to the calcination ; whence 

 Dr. Bostock supposes it to exist in no form, answering to 

 any of the known salts of this metal. That this is the cause 

 of the red colour. Dr. B. thinks may be admitted as a 

 probable presumption : whilst Mr. Brande endeavours to 

 prove that it cannot be so, because he found the presence of 

 iron to be indicated as much in the colourless parts of the 

 blood as in the globules themselves; or rather, his results tend 

 to prove the almost entire absence of iron from the blood *. 

 A very remarkable property of the red globules is their chang- 

 ing colour on being exposed to the action of the different 

 gases. This change was observed to take place on exposing 



* For the most recent experiments on the colouring matter of the blood, 

 which set at rest for ever the question, by confirming the existence of iron 

 in the red particles of the blood, by Engelhart and Rose, see the Edinburgli 

 Medical and Surgical Journal for Jan. 1827, vol. xxvii. No. 90, pp. 95, 96. 



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