78 STEUCTUEE OF COLORED BLOOD-CORPUSCLES. 



All this is very remarkable, unless lie measured mainly the majority, 

 or average-sized corpuscles. He made some selection, for he tells us : 

 "Instead of measuring all corpuscles, deformed or otherwise, in two direc- 

 tions, as proposed by Dr. Woodward (Phila. Medical Times, vol. vi., p. 457), 

 I prefer to determine the size of unaltered, *. e. circular, corpuscles only " ; 

 further, "I cautiously avoided recording those which manifested even slight 

 departures toward an oval form," but, on the other hand, " to secure the most 

 infallible accuracy for my deductions, as the preparation was moved along, I 

 measured every isolated circular red disk which came into the field of the 

 microscope." 



In the year 1761, Padre Jo. Maria de Torre, of Naples, made a present to 

 the Koyal Society of London of four spherical glasses for the microscope, 

 made by himself, of which the diameters and magnifying powers were said to 

 be as follows : 



DIAMETER. MAGNIFYING POWER. 



1. Near 2 Paris points. 640 times, and upward, in diameter. 



2. IParispoint. 1,280 " " " 



3. 1 " " 1,280 " " " 



4. Half a Paris point. 2,560 " " " 



(T!T f an inch.) 



Sir Francis Haskins Eyles Stiles, at the time in Naples, through whom the 

 presentation was made, wrote several letters, in which he communicated 

 Father de Torre's direction for the use of the glasses, as well as an account of 

 some observations on the human blood, made by him, together with Torre, 

 during July and August, 1761, and read before the Society during 

 November, 1765. They saw in the blood-globules the central depression, 

 which had not theretofore been observed, and which carried with it so 

 strongly the appearance of a perforation that they concluded the corpuscles 

 to be rings. They also thought the rings to be articulated (" the transverse 

 lines at the joints being very distinguishable").* As to their shape, "the 

 figure of the rings, where they were free and in their natural state, was 

 circular; but where they were so crowded together as to compress one 

 another in their passage, they assumed a variety of different figures, 

 although they generally restored themselves to a circular figure again, 

 unless broken by the compression, which frequently happened, and then 

 the broken parts floated separately ; or, if they opened at a single joint only, 

 the whole of the ring would float along, varying its figure occasionally from 

 that of a portion of a circle, which it would first assume, to a straight line, an 

 undulated one, or some other accidental incurvature." t 



Hewson \ declared the so-called globules in the blood of man and all ani- 

 mals to be disks "in reality, flat bodies," "as flat as a guinea." The dark 

 spot in the middle, which Father de Torre had taken for a hole, he found 

 "was not a perforation, and therefore that they were not annular." He denied 

 that they were jointed, and inferred " they are not fluid, as they are commonly 



* " An Account of some Microscopic Observations on the Human Blood." Philosophical 

 Transactions, vol. Iv. (1765), p. 254. 



t Ibid., p. 256. 



t " On the Figure and Composition of the Red Particles of the Blood, commonly called the 

 Red Globules." Philosophical Transactions, vol. Ixiii., Part n. (1778), pp. 303-323. 



