xliv INTRODUCTION. 



sanguinis, for the fluid mixture of fibrin and serum in the 

 circulating blood. 



In the London schools Mr. Hunter has long been regarded 

 as the great authority on the coagulation of the blood ; and 

 to crown the confusion, the discovery of the leading property 

 of what he always considered as the most important part of the 

 blood, the coagulable lymph, has been awarded to him. Thus 

 the Hunterian Professor, Mr. Owen, 1 asserts that " Hunter sub- 

 jects the blood both to mechanical and chemical analysis, and 

 endeavours to determine the characteristic properties of its dif- 

 ferent constituents. It was not known in his time upon which 

 of these constituents the act of coagulation depended. Hunter 

 took advantage of a case in which the red globules subsided, 

 as in some cases they do, more rapidly than usual, and skim- 

 ming off the superincumbent colourless fluid, found that the 

 fibrin, as it is now termed, immediately coagulated and formed 

 a colourless clot. A subsequent erroneous theory, which 

 attributed the act of coagulation to the red globules, has 

 recently been set aside by the application of an ingenious pro- 

 cess for artificially separating the fibrin from the blood discs 

 before coagulation takes place, and the opinions of Hunter 

 on this point have been fully established by the experiments 

 of Miiller." 



Now Mr. Hunter was well acquainted with Hewson's work 

 on the f Properties of the Blood/ in which this simple experi- 

 ment of skimming off the liquor sanguinis was detailed, with 

 all the legitimate deductions from it, many years before 1794, 

 when Mr. Hunter's ' Treatise on the Blood ' was published ; 

 and how much longer the fact which the experiment proves 

 had been known, may be gathered from the foregoing narrative. 

 Besides, an eminent English surgeon 2 had commented on and 

 frequently repeated JMr. Hewson's experiment in 1779. 



I know not that Mr. Hunter ever claimed for himself the 

 discovery of any one of the three constituents of the blood. 

 Theperosity, 3 of which he thought himself the discoverer, and 

 the paleness which he is said, by Mr. Owen, to have discovered 

 in the blood of the early embryo of vertebrate animals, 4 had 



1 Hunter's Works, vol. iv, p. xii, 8vo, London, 1837. 



2 Mr. Hey, Observations on the Blood, pp. 10-12, 8vo, London, 1779. 



3 See Note LIV, p. 79. 4 See Note en, p. 222. 



