34 PROPERTIES OF 



thickening the blood, really thins it ; at least that part which 

 forms the crust, viz. the coagulable lymph. 



Hunter, a Dr. George Fordyce, b and Dr. B. G. Babington, c adopted this 

 view. Yet some recent observations are anticipated in the following 

 passage from Mr. Hunter's Surgical Lectures, vol. i, referred to below ; H 

 speaking of the blood in inflammation, he says, " The blood has an in- 

 creased disposition to separate into its component parts, the red globules 

 become less uniformly diffused, and their attraction to one another be- 

 comes stronger, so that the blood when out of the vessels soon becomes 

 cloudy or muddy, and dusky in its colour, and when spread over any 

 surface, it appears mottled, the red blood attracting itself and forming 

 spots of red." See Note xxm. 



I have repeatedly seen a clear layer of liquor sanguinis, about one 

 eighth of an inch deep, appear on the surface of the blood of the horse 

 in two minutes, after which the sinking of the red corpuscles went on 

 with increased speed. In short, as mentioned in Note in, i, k, I believe 

 that the slow coagulation often occurring in blood drawn during in- 

 flammation, so far from being the cause, is an effect of the separation 

 of the fibrin and corpuscles. In two trials, I found that the" liquor 

 sanguinis remained longer fluid when separated, from the corpuscles 

 than when mixed with them. 



Mr. Hewson d knew that the buffy coat does not necessarily follow from 

 slow coagulation ; and Dr. Davy e observed that in certain cases in which 

 the inflammatory diathesis is best marked, the separation of the red 

 particles from the blood drawn is most rapid, often occurring in one or 

 two minutes ; and that in some diseases, particularly erysipelas, the 

 blood taken from a vein coagulates as rapidly as healthy blood, and yet 

 exhibits the buffy coat. The observations of Schroeder Van der Kolk and 

 Dr. Alison/ of Professor Hermann Nasse, g and of Mr. Wharton Jones, h 

 are to the same effect generally. Dr. Stoker 1 has shown that blood 

 which coagulates in one, three, and five minutes, may have a buffy coat ; 

 and yet that it may be absent from blood that is ten, twenty, or even 

 forty minutes in coagulating. Results of the same kind from my ex- 

 periments are mentioned in the ' Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal,' v. 64, 

 p. 370. 



Mr. Hewson, it will be observed, always states that in inflammation 

 the coagulable lymph is thinned or attenuated ; never that it is specifi- 

 cally lighter; yet he is often erroneously represented to have main- 

 tained the latter view. The consistency of the liquor sanguinis, and 

 the state of the red corpuscles leading to the formation of the buffy 

 coat, will be discussed in Notes xxiu and xxix. 



a Works, ed. by Palmer,!, pp. 234-5, 381; f Out. Physiol. and Path. p. 47, 8vo, 



iii, 356. ' Edin. 1833. 



b Elements of the Practice of Physic, e Henle, Anat. Gener. tr. par Jourdan , 



2d ed. 8vo, Lond. 1 768, part ii, p. 30. i, 468. 



-' Cyclopedia of Anatomy, i, 419. h Edin. Med, and Surg. Journ. Ix, 309. 



d See his Exp. x vi, and xxvii. * Pathological Observations, 8vo, Dublin. 

 Phil. Trans. 1822, p. 271 ; Researches 1823, pp. 37, 44. 



ii, 48. 



