THE LEUCOCYTES IN ORGANIC FUNCTIONS. 699 



of a member of the large group of carbohydrates, comprising 

 starches and sugars, viz.: the starch-like body glycogen. . . . 

 This glycogen may exist in the living corpuscle as glycogen, but 

 it is very apt, after the death of the corpuscles, to become 

 changed by hydration into some form of sugar, such as maltose 

 or dextrose." Indeed, he furnishes us complementary evidence, 

 alluding to the cellular proteids in the following sentence: 

 "One of these proteids is a body either identical with or closely 

 allied to the proteid called myosin, which we shall have to study 

 more fully in connection with muscular tissue." We have 

 shown that myosin is the post-mortem product of the action of 

 what remains of oxygen in the plasma upon myosinogen, and 

 that this is the cause, of rigor mortis. Professor Foster says, 

 in this connection: "And we have reasons for thinking that 

 in the living white corpuscle there does exist a body identical 

 with or allied to myosinogen, which we may speak of as being 

 in a fluid condition, and which, on the death of the corpuscle, 

 is converted, by a kind of clotting, into myosin, or into an allied 

 body which, being solid, gives the body of the corpuscle a 

 stiffness and rigidity which it did not possess during life." All 

 this seems to us to clearly suggest that these leucocytes, in the 

 light of our views, supply the muscle-cells of the entire organ- 

 ism with myosinogen. 



Still, our analysis alone so far points to the neutrophiles 

 by far the most numerous leucocytes in the blood-stream 

 as the ones upon which this great function would devolve. We 

 deemed it necessary, therefore, to control this conclusion by 

 showing that excessive muscular exercise, by creating a demand 

 for myosinogen in the cells of all muscles, skeletal, cardiac, 

 vascular, etc., engenders a leucocytosis in which the neutro- 

 philes prevail. We were fortunate enough to find a study of 

 this subject by E. C. Larrabee, 30 who writes as follows: "The 

 paper is based on a study of the blood of four of the contestants 

 in the Boston Athletic Association's Marathon race of 1901. 

 This is a road-race of about twenty-five miles (40 kilometers), 

 held each spring. The severity of the contest will be apparent 

 when it is said that the winner not included in my four 



R. C. Larrabee: Journal of Medical Research, Jan., 1902. 



