THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 223 



the rabbit's skin, it was found to be already slightly 

 opalescent, owing to the presence of myriads of minute 

 particles. After twenty-four hours, the fluid in other 

 bags was found to have become whitish and cloudy 

 from its containing, in addition to the particles, 

 numerous well-formed leucocytes. When examined 

 after a period of thirty-six hours, the fluid was in- 

 variably found to be quite white and milky, owing 

 to the presence of myriads of leucocytes, which ex- 

 hibited the characteristic amoeboid movements, and 

 seemed to differ in no essential respect from ordinary 

 young pus corpuscles or from white corpuscles of the 

 blood i. 



1 M. Onimus found that the nature of the blastema employed modified 

 the results obtained in a most remarkable manner. He says : ' All the 

 experiments we have hitherto recorded are true only on condition that 

 the fibrine is not coagulated ; for neither leucocytes nor any other kind 

 of anatomical elements are produced in the serum of blisters whose 

 fibrine has been coagulated.' These results are most interesting to the 

 physician, and harmonize well with his own experience. He does 

 not expect to meet with pus corpuscles in an effusion into the pleura 

 which has not been caused by inflammation, whilst he is quite prepared 

 to find them in abundance in an inflammatory effusion. In the former 

 case the fluid would not contain both the protein compounds necessary 

 for the production of fibrine, whilst in the latter it would probably contain 

 them in large quantity. Although it is fully granted that the pus corpus- 

 cles in an empyematous fluid may be derived in part from wandering 

 white blood corpuscles, and in part from subdivision of any of the nuclear 

 elements of the tissues in contact with the fluid, I fully believe that 

 another, and perhaps a very large section of them, have been evolved 

 de novo in the blastema itself. Corpuscles derived in either of these 

 ways may of course multiply indefinitely in the fluid by processes of 

 gemmation. In these various ways may we account for the presence of the 

 untold legions of leucocytes which are met with in inflammatory fluids. 



