THE AMERICAN 



MONTHLY 



MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 



Vol.. XVI. MAY, 1895. No. 5. 



Pretuberculosis. 



By EPHRA.IM CUTTER, M. D., hh. D. 



NEW YOEK. 

 MORPHOLOGY OF HEALTHY BLOOD. 



To understand pretuberculosis,* it should be said that 

 healthy blood has certain form elements characteristic 

 under the microscope and that persons apparently mac- 

 roscopically healthy, sometimes present abnormal blood 

 morphologies from latent or incubative diseases. Besides 

 the detection of abnormal blood implies a knowledge of 

 healthy blood. Briefly its morphology presents clinical- 

 ly — 1. The red discs, clean cut, well outlined, plump ; in 

 and during death they arrange themselves in rouleaux, 

 like coins, with curves of Hogarth's lines of beauty — or 

 they are segregate, distinct, separate and quite uniform- 

 ly arranged in the field. 



2. White corpuscles or leucocytes are on the average 

 one third larger in diameter than the red, sometimes 

 globular or oval, sometimes still and sometimes mobile, 

 sometimes dividing up into two, three, four, five or more 

 regular or irregular parts and reuniting. Sometimes 

 being merged into one with other leucocytes; sometimes 



*rhis article is abbreviated from an essay which Dr. Cutter wrote iu 1877, 

 in competition for the American Medical Association's prize It was illus- 

 trated with 68 original micro photographs and written in the belief that 

 1:5,000 lives could be saved annually in the U. S., by the detection and 

 treatment of the pretubercular stage alone. It is now 40 years since Dr. Jas. 

 If. Salisbury, LL. D., discovered this physical sign and used it. Dr. Cutter 

 terms it " the Morphology of Consumptive Blood." The paper was offered 

 at the Brooklyn meeting of the A. M. S., and not read nor called for. 



