74 THE BLOOD. 



two substances, the qualities of wliicli lie proposes to 

 express by the terms fibrino-plastic and fibrinogenous. 



The substance which he terms fibrino-plastic, and which 

 he has obtained, not only from blood, but from many 

 other liquids and solids, as the crystalline lens, chyle and 

 lymph, connective tissue, etc., which are found capable of 

 exciting coagulation in serous fluids, is probably identical 

 with the globulin of the red corpuscles. 



The fibrinogenous matter obtained from serous effusions 

 differs but little, chemically, from the fibrino-plastic. 



Thus in the experiment before mentioned, the globulin 

 or fibrino-plastic matter of the blood-cells in the clot, 

 causes coagulation by uniting with the fibrinogen present 

 in the hydrocele-fluid. And whenever there occurs coagu- 

 lation with the production of fibrin, whether in ordinary 

 blood- clotting, or in the admixture of serous effusions, or 

 in any other way, a like union of these two substances may 

 be supposed to occur. 



The main result, therefore, of these very interesting 

 experiments and observations has been to make it probable 

 that the idea of fibrin existing in a liquid state in the 

 blood is founded on a mistaken notion of its real nature, 

 and that, probably, it does not exist at all in solution as 

 fibrin, but is formed at the moment of coagulation by 

 the union of two substances which, in fluid blood, exist 

 separately. 



The theories before referred to, concerning the coagu- 

 lation of the blood, will therefore, if this be true, resolve 

 themselves into theories concerning the causes of the union 

 of globulin and fibrinogen ; and whether, on the one hand, 

 it is an inhibitory action of the living blood-vessels that 

 naturally restrains, or a catalytic action of foreign matter 

 that excites, the union of these two substances. 



