200 Prof. C. S. Sherrington. On Changes in the Blood 



redaction in the leacocytopenic phase, indeed it would appear to 

 undergo even greater numerical decrease than the ordinary granular 

 leucocyte with fine granules. Bat when the leacocytopeaic phase 

 passes off and the total nnmber of granular leucocytes in the blood 

 becomes greatly increased, their increase is due entirely to the 

 ' finely granular " cell, and there is no accompanying increase of the 

 " coarsely granular " cell. On the contrary the number of the latter 

 becomes still fewer, not merely in comparison with the rest of the 

 polymorphic, but also in proportion to the number of chromocytes 

 and, more striking still, absolutely as measured per unit volume of 

 the steadily concentrating blood. 



The diminution proceeds to such a degree that usually after the 

 seventh hour from the time of establishment of the local lesion this 

 species of leucocyte has been in my experiments only with some diffi- 

 culty demonstrable in the blood. It disappears from the small samples 

 used in the Thoma-Zeiss counters, and often from the larger samples 

 employed in fresh and dried films spread on f in. circular cover-slips. 

 If the blood be examined by drawing 3 c.c. into a test-tube, oxalating, 

 centrifuging, and making films from the separated layer of leucocytes, 

 examples can usually be then found without very prolonged search, 

 but at the ninth hour and later I have several times failed to find any, 

 even by prolonged search, after separation by the centrifuge. 



It seems, therefore, that in consequence of severe local inflammation 

 the " coarsely-granular " heamic leucocyte of Wharton Jones may 

 practically disappear from the general circulation, although at the 

 same time his " finely granular " hsemic leucocyte may be enormously 

 increased in number. 



As to the significance of this disappearance, two possibilities arise 

 at once for consideration. 



1. The cell may have become caught and so to say hidden in some 

 part or parts of the vascular system, or have wandered out of the 

 blood circulation altogether. 



2. The cell may have become so altered in appearance that it is not 

 recognisable by the criteria I adopt for distinguishing it. Or its 

 resistance to the procedures employed in looking for it may have 

 become so lowered that it is destroyed in the process of search. 



To take the last hypothesis first. I consider the coarsely 

 granular haemic leucocyte of the mammalian blood I have examined, 

 to be normally one of the most resistant and easily preserved cells in 

 the body. It can be frozen and thawed again, irrigated with 33 per 

 cent, alcohol, with saturated ammonium molybdate solution, with 

 strong aqueous solution of pyrogallic acid, with ammonium sulphide 

 solution, with 0'3 per cent, acetic acid ; it can be heated after partial 

 drying to 120 C C., and higher, and yet its granulation not be lost or 

 characters distinctive of them destroyed, or the cell itself altered 



