ON THE EARLY STAGES OF INFLAMMATION 237 
vious similar comparisons. On another occasion, a friend of mine suffering 
from intense inflammation of the back of the hand, in consequence of the irrita- 
tion of offensive pus, permitted me to take blood with a needle from the most 
severely affected part, and also from one of the fingers, which was healthy. 
I compared drops from the two sources several times very carefully with each 
other by means of the microscope, but could discover no difference between 
them in the adhesiveness of their corpuscles ; as indicated by the time of forma- 
tion of the rouleaux, their mode of grouping, and the tenacity with which the 
discs composing them adhered when they were stretched. The results of these 
experiments appear decidedly confirmatory of the conclusion with reference to 
which they were instituted. 
No mention has been hitherto made of the appearance presented by the 
colourless corpuscles in an irritated part. It is well known that their numbers, 
in proportion to the red ones, vary very much in different frogs, and it so hap- 
pened that in the two on which the first mustard experiments were performed 
they showed themselves but little; nor are they at all conspicuous when the 
circulation has been arrested by ligature ; but in most cases in which irrita- 
tion is applied to the web while the blood is circulating through it, one of the 
earliest abnormal appearances is that of white corpuscles adhering in large 
numbers to the walls of arteries, capillaries, and veins, as first described and 
accurately figured by Dr. Williams.t. This remarkable phenomenon, though of 
itself clear proof of an alteration in the properties of the blood in an irritated 
part, has, strangely enough, attracted little attention from other observers. 
It is evidently analogous to the change which the red discs experience under 
similar circumstances. I find that the account commonly given of the white 
corpuscles in circulation in the vessels of the frog’s web, viz. that they may be 
seen rolling slowly along the walls of the arteries and veins, and sometimes 
sticking to them, though intended to apply to the state of health,” really describes 
a condition of a slight amount of irritation, such as is exceedingly apt to be 
induced by a variety of causes.* In perfect health the colourless corpuscles 
* Vide op. cit. 
* Mr. Wharton Jones, in describing the healthy circulation in the bat’s wing, speaks of the colour- 
less corpuscles as ‘ rolling or sliding sluggishly along the walls of the vessels’, ‘ both in arteries and 
veins.’ He also describes, in the following passage, increased adhesiveness as resulting from irritation. 
“Towards the end of a protracted sitting, after the web had been much irritated, I have seen, in the 
venous radicles especially, colourless corpuscles accumulated in great numbers, as we so often see them 
in the frog,’ But no stress is laid on this fact as bearing upon the nature of inflammation (see ‘ Observa- 
tions on the State of the Blood and the Blood-vessels in Inflammation,’ by T. Wharton Jones, F.R.S., 
Medico-Chirurgical Tvansactions, vol. xxxvi, 1853). Dr. Williams, supposing that the white corpuscles 
were always adhesive within the vessels in health, was led to attribute their abnormal accumulation in 
an irritated part to local fresh formation of those bodies (vide op. cit.). 
* It has been mentioned in the note to p. 225, that this effect is peculiarly Hable to be produced 
in consequence of the vicinity of the warm hand. 
