THE LEUCOCYTES IN ORGANIC FUNCTIONS. 701 



from the white corpuscles, nucleo-proteid is liberated in the 

 first moments after blood is' shed, and that this nucleo-proteid 

 is then changed into fibrin-ferment." 



The relationship between the cellular nucleo-proteids and 

 fibrin which this quotation suggests finds itself sustained by 

 Eanvier, 32 who, alluding to the role of granules in the forma- 

 tion of fibrin, says: "Free granulations, which we found in the 

 blood besides the red and white corpuscles, are very numerous; 

 they were termed 'elementary vesicles' by Zimmermann. In 

 a preparation of human blood examined after rouleaux of red 

 corpuscles have formed these granulations may easily be ob- 

 served, two varieties being distinguishable. The first are spher- 

 ical, small droplets of fat; the others are angular or variable 

 in shape, and appear at first as if they were fragments of white 

 corpuscles, but differ from the latter in not being altered by 

 water. They are stained by iodine, but remain colorless in car- 

 mine solutions. We will see that these are also the character- 

 istics of fibrin." After reviewing the phenomena that attend 

 coagulation, and exposure by washing of the fibrinous net-work, 

 he says: "When this preparation is examined and magnified 

 four hundred to five hundred diameters, the fibrinous retic- 

 ulum can be seen distinctly, and is disposed in a very interesting 

 manner: From an angular granulation, from 1 to 10 ft in di- 

 ameter, very tenuous fibrils start divergingly, then subdivide, 

 to unite with other fibrils, in order to form a delicate net-work. 

 The preparation is covered with these small net-works, each 

 of which has its central granulation. . . . The granula- 

 tions which serve as centers for each diminutive fibrinous retic- 

 ulum have the same microchemical properties as the fibrils." 



A normal deduction which seems to us to impose itself 

 in this connection is that fibrin is to the blood what myosin 

 is to the muscle-cells, i.e., a post-mortem product due to arrest 

 of the oxidation process which during life is insured by the 

 oxidizing substance the supposed "fibrin-ferment." In other 

 words, it not only becomes evident that peptones, myosinogen, 

 and fibrinogen are products of the same variety of leucocyte, the 

 neutrophile, and therefore chemically similar when liberated from 



2 Ranvier: Loc. cit., 213. 



