CHAPTER VIII 



THE EXCITATION OF AMCEBOID MOVEMENTS IN WHITE 

 BLOOD-CORPUSCLES CAUSED BY ALKALOIDS 



SOON after this in-vitro method of staining was invented, 

 it occurred to me that it might be employed for 

 measuring the lives of human leucocytes after their 

 removal from the body. Much work had been done 

 by others in the way of determining the effects of 

 virulent disease-germs on men and animals, and soon 

 after the discovery of "opsonins" by Wright and 

 Douglas, many researches were made to find out how 

 individual human cells defended the body by attacking 

 pathogenic organisms; but little was known about 

 the effects of virulent germs and their poisons on the 

 protecting leucocytes. Hence, if one could measure 

 the lives of leucocytes, it would be a simple matter 

 to mix them with the toxins produced by bacteria, 

 and determine the virulence of these toxins by seeing 

 how long it took for them to kill leucocytes. 



In order to measure the length of time that 

 leucocytes will live in a given sample of blood removed 

 from the body, it is obvious that the first thing to 



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