

STEUCTUEE OF COLORED BLOOD-CORPUSCLES. 97 



The regular rosette, stellated, and thorn-apple shapes are 

 caused by a uniform concentric contraction of the living matter ; 

 the fluid in the interior, being pressed toward the outer layer 

 between the points of attachment of the threads, will produce 

 a bulging out at the periphery. Irregular contractions of the 

 living matter will give rise to irregular flaps at the periphery. 



An indentation is due to locally limited contraction of the 

 net-work in the interior of the corpuscle. Contraction of the 

 living matter at one part of the periphery will bring about a 

 protrusion of a flap at another, the flap being bounded by the 

 outer layer of the corpuscle. 



Segmental contraction of the net- work will produce a rupture 

 of the outer layer of the corpuscle, with projection of a pedun- 

 culated granule or knob, formerly a part of the interior net-work. 

 Continued contraction will be followed by the rupture of the 

 pedicle and the production of either so-called detritus or small 

 granules, or when the protruded knob is larger, or has become 

 swelled, of a pale-grayish disk.* 



Lastly, a large amount of the net- work having been separated 

 from the parent body, the latter becomes transformed into a pale 

 disk, in which no traces of a net- work, or but very indistinct 

 ones, are visible, a so-called ghost. 



At every stage of the protrusion of either flaps or pedunculated 

 knobs or granules, the living matter may be overtaken by death, 

 and the contraction become fixed by cadaveric rigidity. It may 

 perhaps be worth while to notice that irregular contractions have 

 a somewhat greater tendency to such permanency than regular 

 ones ; these more frequently yielding, by relaxation of the net- 

 work, or reestablishment of the state of rest, at impending death. 

 But in the blood-corpuscles kept for over two years in bichromate 

 of potash, all the described forms can be observed just as well 

 as in freshly made specimens. 



* The peculiar corpuscles believed to be characteristic of syphilis by Los- 

 torfer, and proved by Strieker to be present in the blood of individuals broken 

 down by that and various other diseases, are nothing but such disks i. e., 

 portions of the colored blood-corpuscles protruded from the interior, detached 

 and more or less swelled. As persons in low states of health have a relatively 

 small amount of living matter in the same bulk, or, in other words, only a 

 delicate net-work within the bioplasson body or plastid (the so-called " cell ") 

 such a net-work suspended in a relatively large amount of fluid can much 

 more easily contract and bring about a rupture of the outer layer, than in the 

 case of healthy persons, within whose plastids there is relatively less room for 

 contraction to take place. 



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