92 STRUCTURE OF COLORED BLOOD-CORPUSCLES. 



If it had not been for the deserved eminence in other respects of the three 

 investigators, Rollett, Briicke, and Strieker, these notions of the structure of 

 colored blood-corpuscles would probably never have attracted any attention. 



Laptschinsky * considered colored corpuscles to consist of two kinds of 

 substance, viz., one which appears smooth, soft, extensible, assumes mostly 

 a roundish form, and altogether possesses some if not all of the proper- 

 ties of the so-called stroma ; the second, visible under the microscope 

 only when through the action of different re-agents it is precipitated, 

 or swelled, or both. It is this second substance which, on staining, takes up 

 the coloring matters, and, by separating in the interior of the corpuscle from 

 the first substance, or protruding from it, gives rise to the various shapes 

 observed. At present it cannot be determined in what relation these two 

 substances stand to each other previous to the precipitation of the stainable 

 portion. The separating the blood-corpuscles into the two substances men- 

 tioned is brought about by various external influences. 



In amphibian, i. e., frogs' and salamanders', red blood-corpuscles, Hensen, 

 Bottcher, Kollmann, and Fuchs have seen a net-work ; and although they 

 have failed to interpret it correctly as is evident from the context of their 

 descriptions I beg to call special attention to their observations. 



Hensen ascribed to the corpuscle the possession of protoplasm accumulated 

 at the nucleus and at the inner surface of the membrane ; the two being 

 connected by delicate radiating filaments, in the spaces between which the 

 colored cell-liquid lies.t 



Bottcher, from his observations, " inferred that around the nucleus of the 

 amphibian blood-corpuscles a mass of protoplasm is collected, which radiates 

 in the form of filaments into the homogeneous red substance. . . . The pro- 

 toplasm appears sometimes collected uniformly round the nucleus, at other 

 times it is accumulated more to one side of it. It is either provided with only 

 a few processes, or is arranged round the nucleus in the shape of an elegant 

 star, whose points extend to the margin of the corpuscle, or else it forms 

 round the nucleus a peculiar lobed figure. Very often it appears beset on one 

 or all sides with fine, hair-like processes. Then, again, it may represent a sort 

 of net-work, which either appears separated from the less darkly colored cor- 

 tical layer and more contracted, or else it throws out into the cortex innu- 

 merable very fine radiating filaments, so that its processes approach the 

 extreme periphery of the blood-corpuscles. In this case, therefore, the whole 

 blood-corpuscle is permeated by a net-work of fine filaments, "t 



According to Kollmann, the membrane incloses a net-work of delicate 

 slightly granular albumen threads. These in their totality constitute the 

 stroma, and in the small spaces between the threads of the stroma lies the 

 haemoglobin. The soft, elastic albumen threads are stretched between mem- 

 brane and nucleus. Only by a certain degree of their tension is the charac- 

 teristic form of the blood-corpuscle possible. The haemoglobin in the meshes 

 counteracts excessive shortening of the threads. 



Fuchs expresses himself similarly as to the net-work of fibers emanating 

 from the nucleus, and going to the periphery of the frog's red blood-corpuscle. 



r " Ueber das Verhalten der rothen Blutkorperchen," loc. cit., pp. 173, 174. 

 t " TJntersu chun gen," 1. c., p. 261. 



t " On the Minute Structural Relations of the Red Blood-corpuscles." Quarterly Journal 

 of Microscopical Science, Oct., 1877, pp. 388-390. 

 "Ban der rothen Blutkorperchen," 1. c., p. 482. 



