THE THIRD HUXLEY LECTURE 541 



granules, like the blood-corpuscles, acquire under irritation a tendency to mutual 

 aggregation which they do not possess in health, it follows, as a matter of course, 

 that when vital energy is suspended by the noxious agency, they will adhere 

 together and retain their relative positions. 



After being appointed to the Chair of Surgery- in the University of Glasgow, 

 I became one of the surgeons to the Royal Infirmary of that city. Here I had 

 too ample opportunity for studying hospital diseases, of which the most fearful 

 was pyaemia. About this time I saw the opinion expressed by a high authority 

 in pathology that the })us in a pyaemic vein was probably an accumulation of 

 leucocytes. Facts such as those which I mentioned as having aroused my 

 interest in my student days in a case of pyaemia, made such a view to me 

 incredible, and I determined to ascertain, if possible, the real state of things 

 by experiment. I introduced into a vein of a living horse a short glass tube 

 open at both ends, containing a piece of silver wire in which was mounted a little 

 bit of calico, which I thought likely to give rise slowly to putrefactive change ; 

 shutting off the portion of vein concerned from the general circulation bv means 

 of ligatures. After the lapse of some days I removed the venous compartment 

 and found that the blood in it had undergone very remarkable changes. The 

 limits of this lecture (which have been already too widely extended) make it 

 impossible for me to enter into details, as I had hoped to have done, regarding 

 the researches of which this was the commencement. I must content myself 

 with stating the conclusion to which I was led at the time I am speaking of, 

 and which was confirmed by later investigation, viz. that the introduction 

 of septic material into a vein may give rise to the rapid development of large 

 nucleated cells which, growing at the expense of the original constituents of 

 the coagulum, convert it entirely into a thick yellow liquid. The pus so formed 

 contains corpuscles which, like those which I sketched in the early case at 

 University College, are not pus corpuscles in the ordinary sense or leucocytes, 

 but the variously sized, more or less granular nuclei of the large cells, the pellucid 

 bodies of which constitute the so-called liquor puris. Into the question of the 

 origin of these rapidly proliferating cells I must not enter. This process of 

 genuine suppuration of the blood-clot removed all the difticulties I had felt in 

 interpreting the post mortem appearances in jn'aemia. and also its clinical 

 features. 



Having become familiar with the appearances of these cells in suppurating 

 coagula, I was able to recognise them in acute abscesses in the human subject, 

 and to demonstrate them to others by mixing carmine with the pus. so as to render 

 clearly defined the limits of the pellucid bodies of the cells, which otherwise 

 would have been regarded as litjuor ])iu"is. 



