PUS. 147 



be desirable, perhaps, to avoid the numerous designations which 

 have been applied to these bodies, and to adopt the name of 

 cyto'id corpuscles proposed by Henle (F. P. 11, F. 3). 



We do not purpose entering more deeply into the morphology 

 of pus, its mode of formation, &c., as this would be leading us too 

 far from the main subject of our inquiries, and involving us in a 

 labyrinth of unanswered or unanswerable questions and the 

 vaguest conjectures, as the chemical investigations hitherto made 

 in this department of inquiry have contributed very little towards 

 the elucidation of pus and purulent exudations. Although we 

 found ourselves compelled on a previous occasion, when investi- 

 gating the micro-chemical characters of pus and suppuration,* to 

 hazard various hypotheses on the morphological as well as the 

 chemical nature of purulent formations, we are nevertheless of 

 opinion that where chemistry is not sufficient in itself to solve 

 the difficulties falling within its own scope of inquiry, it ought 

 not to assume the semblance of being able to lay the foundation 

 of a rational enquiry by the aid of unstable conjectures and mere 

 assumptions the imputation of which has, on too many occasions, 

 clung to this science. We will not, therefore, enter further into 

 the genesis of pus-cells, or of the morphological elements allied to 

 them, nor will we dwell on the physiological value of these cells, the 

 different characters of laudable and malignant pus, &c., as almost 

 every recent histological and pathological work abounds in the 

 most comprehensive facts and opinions bearing upon these points. 

 The sifting of the chemical facts before us will also be a matter of 

 extreme facility, owing to the very small number of positive 

 results yielded by the earlier chemical investigations. 



The reason why a very subordinate degree of interest attaches 

 itself to the earlier investigations made on this subject, many of 

 which were conducted with great care, depends in a great degree 

 upon the difficulty, or even impossibility, of separating the cytoi'd 

 corpuscles of the pus from the intercellular fluid, (the so-called 

 pus-serum,) although such a separation is obviously necessary to 

 afford such a view of the constitution of the pus, as may at once 

 accord with nature and satisfy the requirements of physiology. 

 A quantitative determination of the constituents of the corpuscles, 

 such as we have at all events approximately obtained for the 

 blood, is scarcely possible as yet in the case of pus. Pus-corpuscles 

 do riot admit more readily than the blood-corpuscles of being 



* Arch. f. phys. Heilk. Bd, 1, S. 218-265 [a joint memoir by Lehmann and 

 Messerschmidt.] 



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