ITS USES. 107 



The red cells of the blood of the hepatic veins are altogether 

 different from those of the portal blood; in regard to their 

 grouping, I very often found them assume the nummular arrange- 

 ment in portal blood (in horses five hoars after they had taken 

 food), while in the blood of the hepatic veins I could never find a 

 trace of any such arrangement, but saw them lying together in 

 irregular heaps ; we have become acquainted, through the admirable 

 investigations of F. C. Schmid, with the peculiar colour, the 

 spotted appearance, and the irregular forms of the coloured cells of 

 portal blood; nothing of the kind was ever discovered in the cor- 

 responding blood-cells of the hepatic veins ; they presented a 

 sharp outline, and a very slight, although a recognisable, central 

 depression. 



The capsules of the coloured cells in the two kinds of blood 

 present well-marked chemical differences, especially in their 

 relation to water. The coloured cells of ordinary blood, if 

 watched under the microscope, almost entirely disappear when 

 much water is added ; this is also the case in portal blood, 

 although here also, as in every other kind of blood, a few of the 

 coloured blood-cells, or rather of their capsules, still remain 

 visible. In the blood of the hepatic veins a very different state 

 of things is, however, observed ; on diluting it with from 30 to 50 

 times its volume of water, the blood-corpuscles certainly are 

 changed, that is to say, they become pale, swell up, lose their pig- 

 ment, and unite so as to form membranes which, under the 

 microscope, resemble detached serpent's scales. We have pre- 

 viously observed, that these decolorized blood-cells in the blood 

 of the hepatic veins, were formerly mistaken for fibrin ; but we 

 may readily convince ourselves by the microscope of the almost 

 entire absence of fibrin in the cruor of hepatic venous blood, 

 and by the following experiment, of the accuracy of this view, and 

 of the great number of these indestructible corpuscles in the blood 

 of the hepatic veins. On mixing the fluid expressed from the 

 clot with 20 times its quantity of water, portal blood, like that 

 from any other vein, yields a slight flocculent deposit, in which 

 shreds of conglomerated cell-walls may be recognised by the 

 microscope; if, on the other hand, we treat an equal volume of 

 fluid strained from the cruor of hepatic venous blood with 20 times 

 its quantity of water, there will be a flocculent precipitate of 6 or 

 8 times the bulk of the precipitate in the other experiment, 

 (although the non-fibrinous cruor of the hepatic venous blood con- 

 tains in its interstices one-half more serum than an equal volume 



