INTRODUCTION. xxvii 



extravasated, thereby gaining a more solid consistence, produced 

 by manifold fibres." The blood-clot he regarded as made up 

 of minute white filaments, or thin membranes inclosing the red 

 particles. He had a correct idea of the nature of polypi of the 

 heart ; and his elaborate descriptions of the intimate structure 

 of the buffy coat, and of the arrangement of the parts com- 

 posing the clot of buflfy blood, show how accurately he had 

 examined these subjects for himself, even if he did get his first 

 knowledge of them from Malpighi. 



Bidloo 1 figured and described little fibres and the red cor- 

 puscles in a drop of blood, stating that the fibres, after exposure 

 for a while, become very tough, tensile, and like network. He 

 calls the corpuscles globosse vesiculae. William Cowper 2 re- 

 peated Bidloo's plate and description, but thought that the 

 fibres were accidental, and described the blood as consisting 

 only of two parts, the serous and globular. 



Verduc 3 calls the serum serosity, stating that it is the same 

 as the lymph, or dew of the blood. He says that it is to a 

 mucilage mixed with the red part that the blood owes its more 

 or less easy coagulation, and the clot its consistency and union, 

 while the coagulation of the blood is caused by the collecting 

 together and the flattening of the little globules. 



Gulielmini 4 examined coagulated blood microscopically, and 

 described it as composed of whitish fibres and red globules; 

 and Michelotti 5 attests that the crassamentum consists not of 

 globules only, but also of most minute and tough fibres. 



Sydenham 6 describes the buffy coat as solid and fibrous, the 

 fibres perhaps formed of the sanguineous or red part divested of 

 its colouring matter. Boerhaave 7 regarded the fibrous part of 

 the blood as chains of globules ; Haller 8 mentions fibres gene- 

 rated from the red portion ; Quesnay 9 ascribes the buffy coat 



Anatomia Humani Corporis, tab. 23, fig. 16, fol. Amstelaedami, 1685. 



Anatomy of Humane Bodies, revised and published by C. B. Albinus, tab. 23, 



16, fol. Leyden, 1737. 



Traite de 1'Usage des Parties, torn, i, pp. 182, 184, 185, 188, 12mo, Paris, 1696. 



De Sanguinis Natura et Constitution, p. 54, 8vo, Venetiis, 1701. 



De Separatione Fluidorum in Corpore Animali, p. 286, 4to, Venetiis, 1721. 



Opera Omnia, p. 247, Imp. Soc. Syden. 8vo, Lond. 1844. 



Academical Lectures, 221, 223, vol. ii, 8vo, London, 1743. 



8 Primae Lineae Physiologiae, cxlvi, 8vo, Gott. 1780. 



9 Traite de la Saignee, pp. 415-16, 8vo, Paris, 1750. 



