124 



DISTENSION OF CAPILLARIES 



occluded. The liquor sanguinis is transuding 

 through their walls, and in a very short time the 

 minute vessels would have appeared quite filled with 

 bioplasm, and the growth of the living matter from 

 the minute particles of bioplasm which escaped when 

 they were distended, would soon have commenced as 

 in Figs. 48, 49, 50, plates XII, XIII, XIV. The fact of 

 the increase of the white blood-corpuscles appears to 

 have been overlooked in consequence of the prepara- 

 tion of the specimens not having been conducted with 

 sufficient care to permit of examination being made 

 with powers of high magnifying power. 



Whenever a capillary vessel is distended, its walls 

 necessarily become much reduced in thickness, and 

 in extreme distension which occurs in inflammation, 

 little longitudinal rents or fissures are here and there 

 produced. Through these, serum, holding in suspen- 

 sion very minute bioplasts probably detached from 

 the larger ones growing and multiplying in the vessel, 

 pass. Having thus extravasated, these particles, 

 resulting directly from the subdivision of the white 

 blood-corpuscles, make their way by vital movements 

 into the interstices of the surrounding tissues, and 

 being nearly stationary, and abundantly supplied with 

 nutrient pabulum, grow and multiply in the new 

 locality, and at an increasing rate. The phenomena 

 here described will be understood if the figures given in 

 Plates XII, XIII, and XIV be carefully studied. These 

 have been copied from preparations which were pre- 



