582 MOVEMENTS OF THE SPLEEN. [Book ii. 



does the fluid plasma, and that hence a concentration of the 

 corpuscles as compared with the plasma must take place in the 

 meshes. The contents of the meshes cannot, properly speaking, 

 be called blood, but are rather aggregations of corpuscles with 

 a relatively small quantity of fluid. 



The white corpuscles or leucocytes are of various kinds. 

 Some are small, like the leucocytes of a lymphatic gland, the 

 cell-substance being scanty relatively to the nucleus. Others 

 are indistinguishable from the kinds of white corpuscles pres- 

 ent in the blood. Others again are large, twice as large as an 

 ordinary white corpuscle or even larger than this, possess more 

 than one nucleus, and contain in their cell-substance numerous 

 refractive, pale yellow or colourless granules. Some of these 

 larger forms, which like the others exhibit amoeboid movements, 

 and are often irregular in form, are characterized by the pres- 

 ence in their cell-substance of red corpuscles, sometimes in 

 almost a natural condition, sometimes more or less irregular in 

 shape with their red haemoglobin changing into the browner 

 hpematin, and sometimes disintegrated into a mass of brown 

 granules. The fluid or plasma in which these cells float also 

 contains besides normal red corpuscles a certain number of red 

 corpuscles in various stages of change, as well as pigment 

 granules which appear to be derived from haemoglobm. Ob- 

 viously a certain number of red corpuscles do undergo change 

 in the spleen, but whether the change is mainly effected in the 

 cell-substance of the cells just mentioned, or takes place in the 

 plasma, the products of disintegration being subsequently taken 

 up, in amoeboid fashion, by the cells in question, is not as yet 

 clear. Besides the above, in the spleen of young animals, 

 nucleated cells with haemoglobin holding cell-substance, hae- 

 matoblasts (see § 27), have been described; these are said to 

 appear also in the spleen of adults after very great loss of blood. 



§ 374. The Chemical Constituents of the Spleen. Besides 

 the chemical bodies which one would expect to And in a vas- 

 cular, muscular organ full of blood, the spleen contains bodies, 

 lodged apparently in the spleen pulp, which give it special 

 chemical characters. One of the most important of these is a 

 special proteid of the nature of alkali-albumin, holding iron in 

 some way peculiarly associated with it. The occurrence of this 

 ferruginous proteid, accompanied as it is by several peculiar 

 but at present little understood pigments, rich in carbon, which 

 are partly present in the cells spoken of above and partly de- 

 posited in the branched cells of the reticulum, appears to be 

 connected with the changes undergone by the haemoglobin 

 which we shall presently discuss. The inorganic salts of the 

 spleen, or at least those of its ash, are remarkable for the 

 large amount of both soda and phosphates, and the small 

 amount of potash and chlorides which they contain, thus dif- 



