1894.] MICHOSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 371 



no color and holds no liaBmoglobin. If we recall the fact 

 that a red blood corpuscle is made up of a reticulum of 

 colorless matter, in whose meshes is suspended more or 

 less hsemoglobin, we readily understand that the plate- 

 lets being exclusively formations of living matter lack 

 haemoglobin altogether. 



While I am positive that the platelets are products of 

 the red blood corpuscles, I cannot deny that they also 

 arise from colorless blood corpuscles. I have made 

 several observations which indicate that they also orig- 

 inate from granules or rather points of intersection of 

 the reticulum of living matter of colorless blood cor- 

 puscles. Platelets under all circumstances are identical 

 with granules of living matter. 



As to the significance of the blood platelets I do not 

 claim that they are of pathological significance. This 

 much, however, is certain, that in the blood of perfectly 

 healthy persons they are either very few or entirely ab- 

 sent. On the contrary, the more a person's health is im- 

 paired by any chronic disease the more certain we are 

 to find a large number of them in his blood, when taken 

 from the vessels a few seconds before microscopical ex- 

 amination. In persons suffering from Syphilis, Cancer, 

 Tuberculosis, or even from Neurasthenia we find them 

 in considerable numbers. Lostorfer, (Medicinische Jahr- 

 bucher, 1871,) was as he admitted mistaken in bringing 

 the platelets into relation with Syphilis. K. L. Watkins, 

 (The Medical Brief Vol. 21, 1893,) is, I hold, also mis- 

 taken in bringing the platelets into exclusive relation 

 with tuberculosis. No doubt these bodies are always 

 present in large numbers in the blood of persons with 

 other chronic wasting diseases. 



Wm. Osier in his Cartwright lectures, 1886, claims that 

 the so called third corpuscle is identical with the HsBma- 

 toblast, as most other observers do. He quotes Hayem 

 as the discoverer of the hsematoblast as well as of the 



