consequent upon Inflammations of acute local Character. 201 



beyond recognition. Now when the cell is discoverable only in scanty 

 number in the blood, those individuals still present offer the same 

 strikiiisfly resistant quality as do the similar cells obtainable from 

 normal blood. Yet in order on the above view to explain its dis- 

 appearance from the blood, we have to suppose that in the simple 

 process of the shedding of a drop of blood direct npon a clean cover- 

 glass, and the spreading of the drop into a film tinder the action of 

 capillarity when the cover-glass is dropped upon the glass slide, 

 the cell forthwith disappears to leave behind no recognised trace. 

 This seems improbable, the more so as the search for the cell was in 

 my case often commenced less than twenty seconds after it left the 

 circulation. 



The supposition that the appearance of the cell is altered, and that 

 for that reason the cell, although still circulating, escapes recognition, 

 merits more consideration. 



Ehrlich was, I believe, the first to suggest that the coarsely granu- 

 lar leucocyte is a unicellular gland. From this suggestion one passes 

 by a step, which is easy in the light of Heidenhain's and Langley's dis- 

 coveries of phases of granularity in secreting cells, to the supposition 

 that the granules of the coarsely granular leucocyte may disappear from 

 it at certain periods of its activity. Recently Kanthack and Hardy* 

 have most importantly extended some suggestive work by Hankin, 

 and have proved that under bacterial irritation the coarsely granular 

 leucocyte of the frog does actually change its appearance, aud that 

 the granules disappear from it more or less completely, while the 

 surrounding microbes suffer damage. 



Although bacteria were certainJy never in the blood in my experi 

 ments it is impossible to suppose that this coarsely granular leucocyte 

 discharges itself of granules under irritation of a bacterial kind only. 

 The local inflammation in my experiments it is conceivable adds sub- 

 stances to the blood which may irritate these cells in the same way. 

 If so it might be expected that in the frequent and prolonged 

 examinations of these cells in living films, in hanging drops, &c , 

 some good and indubitable evidence of the phenomenon should have 

 met me. In the blood, say at the fifth hour, when the numerical dis- 

 appearance of the cell is already advanced, there might have been 

 expected, unless the disappearance of the granules is almost moment- 

 ary, a certain number of cells in which the removal of the granules is 

 incomplete. I have never observed any such appearance. In this 

 connection I have especially borne in mind the occurrence of the 

 snbvarieties of the cell already mentioned. It is obvious that these 

 subvarieties may be merely phases of development or degradation of 

 charging or discharging of the cell; one of them certainly seems an 



* ' Eoy. Soc. Proc.,' December, 1892. 



P 2 



