194 BLOOD. 



perfectly distinct fibrinous flakes, which; like the cell-membranes, 

 were scarcely at all acted on even by acetic acid and alkalies. 



I have just read (as these sheets are passing through the press) 

 that Bruch* believes that he has convinced himself that all the 

 so-called fibrinous flakes are nothing more than epithelial cells 

 from the skin of the observer, accidentally falling from the epidermis 

 of the face on the preparation. The occurrence of these fibrinous 

 flakes in most other animal fluids, their absence in the circulating 

 blood, the adhesion of air to them, their chemical relations, the 

 form of the horny epithelial scales, and lastly, the fact that they 

 are found even in a single drop of water over which the head has 

 been shaken, are sufficient grounds for the belief that the majority 

 of the structures which have been regarded as fibrinous flakes are 

 nothing else than dried cells of pavement epithelium ; we cannot, 

 however, explain all the formations of this kind, which we some- 

 times find in the blood, by assuming that they are epidermic 

 scales. If blood has been treated with water (in the same manner 

 in which Nasse treated his fibrin from which he saw such flakes 

 project), we find far more of these fibrinous flakes resembling 

 crumpled laminae than in fresh blood, and this is especially ob- 

 served when the blood of the hepatic veins is thus treated with 

 water : these are obviously the adhering, stretched and distorted 

 walls of the blood-corpuscles, which, as we have already indicated, 

 resemble the epidermic scales in resisting the action of acetic acid 

 and of not too concentrated potash ley. 



According to the most recent researches, the colourless corpuscles 

 are perfectly identical with the lymph- and chyle-corpuscles; indeed, 

 notwithstanding the assertions formerly made to the contrary, no 

 single difference can be pointed out between them and the mucus- 

 and pus-corpuscles: we need only refer to the elaborate works 

 and memoirs of Henle,t H. Miiller,t and Virchow. The cor- 

 puscles approximate to the spherical form, and are not elastic ; 

 their investing membrane is more or less granular, and is always 

 so viscid that the corpuscles possess a well-marked tendency to 

 conglomerate into larger or smaller groups. In the circulating 

 blood we see them rolling along the walls of the capillaries (while 

 the coloured corpuscles move far more rapidly and nearer to the 

 axis of the vessel), as may be easily perceived in the web- 



* Zeitschr. f. rat. Med. Bd. 9, S. 216222. 

 t Allg. Anatomie, S. 422. 

 J Zeitschr. f. rat. Med. Bd. 3, S. 204 268. 

 Op. cit. 



