96 THE SECRETIONS: 



The crystals, after being carefully washed, so as to remove all 

 extraneous matter, formed, when dry, a white powder, and when 

 incinerated on platinum foil, left a white fused ash, consisting 

 of carbonate of soda. The white crystalline mass, when warmed 

 with nitric acid, yielded the deep purple tint indicative of uric 

 acid. On digesting a portion with dilute hydrochloric acid, 

 a large number of rhombic tablets of uric acid appeared on 

 cooling. The hydrochloric acid solution yielded, on gentle 

 evaporation, crystals of chloride of sodium. Hence the white 

 acicular crystals consisted of urate of soda. The red super- 

 natant fluid contained a few corpuscles, a large quantity of albu- 

 men, and some hsematoglobulin. 



Scorbutic pus is thin, ichor-like, of a bad odour, often mixed 

 with blood, and soon becomes putrid. Cancerous pus possesses 

 a very peculiarly fetid odour, and appears very frequently to 

 contain sulphuretted hydrogen and ammonia. 



Pus sometimes contains infusoria; thus K/. Wagner 1 has ob- 

 served minute ciliated animalcules, in some slight degree 

 resembling pus-corpuscles, in pus taken from cancer of the lip; 

 they appeared to be the colpoda cucullus. Valentin has also 

 observed infusoria in the purulent fluid of carcinoma. Donne 2 

 has observed the vibrio lineola in the pus from chancres and 

 gonorrhoea : he found other forms of infusoria in the pus from 

 syphilitic vaginitis ; they were twice the size of the blood-cor- 

 puscles, with a round or elliptic body, considerably prolonged 

 anteriorly ; he proposes for this animalcule the name of trico- 

 monas vaginalis. 



Ichor. 



When pus begins to undergo decay, or is secreted from ma- 

 lignant or carcinomatous growths, or when mortification comes 

 on in consequence of the depressed state of the vital powers, it 

 becomes thin and discoloured, (being often of a brown or reddish 

 tint,) and emits a fetid odour : it is then termed ichor. Ichor 

 frequently contains no pus-corpuscles, or only a very few, and 

 those partially broken : it is of a blood-red colour, but does not 

 always contain blood-corpuscles, the red colour being apparently 

 due to their solution in the putrid and decomposed fluid. From 



1 Valentin's Repertorium, p. 119. 



3 Recherches microsc. sur la nat. du Mucus, etc. Paris, 1837. 



