342 CHANGES IN THE BLOOD. 



fibres and nerve-centres, in which case the patient 

 must die. But secondly, if the compounds which can- 

 not be excreted in the form in which they exist are 

 not to undergo decomposition, they must be quickly 

 taken up and appropriated by the living bioplasm of 

 some sort. As the bioplasm of the excreting urgans 

 is already surcharged even to such an extent as 

 to endanger the integrity of the organs by in- 

 crease of its bulk, and in other ways, the living 

 matter of the blood, and then that of the tissues of 

 the body, begins to appropriate the excess of pabu- 

 lum. The white blood-corpuscles increase in size, and 

 divide and subdivide, the minute particles of bioplasm 

 (see p. 134) grow and increase in number, and the 

 bioplasts of the tissues enlarge, and many new cen- 

 tres (nucleoli) make their appearance in them. But 

 these phenomena cannot occur without the action of the 

 tissues being seriously impaired ; and worse than thisj 

 the increase of bioplasm in the blood inevitably leads to 

 impeded capillary circulation, and to stagnation of the 

 fluids in the substance of all the tissues of the body 

 the result of which, if local, must be destruction to 

 the part of the tissues involved ; if general, fatal to 

 the whole organism. 



But nevertheless, of the two circumstances just 

 spoken of I, the decomposition of albuminous mat- 

 ters, and 2, the excessive growth of the bioplasm the 

 latter is by far the least dangerous, for the first is 

 almost necessarily fatal, and rapidly so. 



