394 Dr. W. Osier on Organisms [June 18, 



500th to one 400th of a line), and speaks of them also as occurring in 

 clumps and groups of globules. Tt is clear, on reading his account, 

 that in part, at any rate, he refers to the corpuscles above described. 

 Gradations such as he noticed between these and the coloured ele- 

 ments I have never met with, and undoubtedly he was dealing with the 

 latter in a partially decolourized condition. Lostorfer's * corpuscles, 

 which attracted such attention a few years ago from the assertion of the 

 discoverer that they were peculiar to the blood of syphilitic patients, 

 require for their production an artificial culture in the moist chamber 

 extending over several days. They appear first after two or three 

 days, or even sooner, as small bright corpuscles, partly at rest, partly in 

 motion, which continue to increase in size, till, by the sixth or seventh 

 day, they have attained the diameter of a red corpuscle, and may possess 

 numerous processes or contain vacuoles in their interior. Blood from 

 healthy individuals, as well as from diseases other than syphilis, has 

 been shown to yield these corpuscles ; and the general opinion at present 

 held of them, is that they are of an albuminoid nature. 



The question at once most naturally arose, How is it possible for such 

 masses, some measuring even one 400th of an inch, to pass through the 

 capillaries, unless supposed to possess a degree of extensibility and 

 elasticity such as their composition hardly warranted attributing to 

 them ? Neither Max Schultze nor Riess offer any suggestion on this 

 point, though the latter thinks that they might, under some conditions, 

 produce embolism. 



During the examination of a portion of loose connective tissue from 

 the back of a young rat, in a large vein which happened to be in the 

 specimen, these same corpuscles were seen, not, however, aggregated 

 together, but isolated and single among the blood-corpuscles (fig. 8) ; and 

 repeated observations demonstrated the fact that, in a drop of blood 

 taken from one of these young animals, the corpuscles were always to 

 be found accumulated together ; while, on the other hand, in the vessels 

 (whether veins, arteries, or capillaries) of the same rat they were always 

 present as separate elements, showing no tendency to adhei'e to one 

 another. The masses, then, are formed at the moment of the withdrawal 

 of the blood, from corpuscles previously circulating free in it. 



To proceed now to the main subject of my communication. If a drop 

 of blood containing these masses is mixed on a slide with an equal quan- 

 tity of saline solution, |-| per cent., or, better still, perfectly fresh serum, 

 covered, surrounded with oil, and kept at a temperature of about 37 C., 

 a remarkable change begins in the masses. If one of the latter is chosen 

 for observation, and its outline carefully noted, it is seen, at first, that 

 the edge presents a tolerably uniform appearance, a few filaments of 



* Wiener med. Presse, 1872, p. 93. Wiener med. Wochenschrift, 1872, No. 8. Article 

 in Archiv f. Dermatolog. 1872. 



