EHE COAGULATION-“OF THE BLOOD 53 
may conceivably be of direct value in bringing about the 
disappearance of intra-vascular blood-clots, such as are common 
in disease. The observations of Dastre,! who attributes fibrino- 
lysis to the action of a fibrinolytic enzyme, accord best with the 
ascertained facts. Arthus and Huber? also confirm his state- 
ment that bacteria are not essentially concerned in the process. 
In experimental phosphorus poisoning not only may a firm clot 
rapidly pass into solution in the serum, but, as Jakoby® has 
shown, the serum in these cases possesses an intense fibrinolytic 
action on normal blood-clot. 
Among the cardinal facts concerning blood when this liquid 
is considered as a whole, the knowledge that the blood on 
escaping from the body coagulates must be far more widely 
spread than are some other points of equal interest, such as 
the possession by the organism of a large excess of blood 
beyond the amount which is actually required for the perform- 
ance of its functions, and that when the body-cells die or are 
diseased, as well as in a variety of conditions such as deprivation 
of food or on the introduction of foreign material into the circu- 
lation, the individual strives by every means in its power to 
maintain the constituents of the blood at their normal, absolute, 
and relative values. That the phenomenon of coagulation is a 
protective one is sufficiently obvious. When blood coagulates 
on the surface of or outside the body it is a normal process, just 
as clotting within the vessels is pathological. Cells detached 
from an organism may show instantaneous chemical and physical 
changes which are variously interpreted as signs of commencing 
death or signs of continuing life. In connection with this, recent 
papers by Vernon‘ and Schryver® may be consulted; and the 
latter has shown that, at any rate in the case of intestinal 
epithelial cells, disintegrative processes commence immediately 
these are detached from the body. But from a morphological 
point of view no cell or part of a cell detached from an organism 
exhibits such a rapid change as that shown by dying blood, and 
the rapidity of this change or rate of coagulation varies in 
different animals, and in the same animal under different 
' Comptes rend. xlv. p. 995 3 Arch, de Phys, xxv. p. 661, 1894. 
* Arch. de Physiol, xxviii. p. 857, 1896. 
* Zettschrift f. phys. Chem. xxx. Pp. 174, 1900. 
* Journ, of Phys. xxxv. p. 53, 1906 ; Zetts. f. allg. Phys. vi. 1906. 
° Biochem. Journal, vol. i. No. 3, 1906. 
