January 25, 1894] 



NATURE 



289 



THE CHEMISTRY OF THE BLOOD. 

 On the Chemistry of the Blood, atid other Scientific 

 Papers. By the late L. C. Wooldridge, M.D., D.Sc, 

 Assistant Physician to, and co-Lecturer on Physiology 

 at Guy's Hospital. Arranged by Victor Horsley, F.R.S., 

 and Ernest Starling, M.D., with an introduction by 

 Victor Horsley (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, 

 Triibner, and Co., Ltd., 1893.) 



TO all who are interested in the progress of medical 

 science and of physiology, the publication of the 

 scientific papers of the late Dr. Wooldridge will be very 

 welcome. Dr. Wooldridge always impressed those who 

 knew him well as possessing many of the attributes of 

 genius. Full of ideas in connection with the subject he 

 chose for his work (chemical physiology), he was not con- 

 tent to limit himself to the expression of ideas simply, 

 but resorted to experiment to test the accuracy of his 

 conceptions. The experiments and observations which 

 he made, it may be said, dealt with one of the most com- 

 plicated subjects in physiology, viz. the chemistry of the 

 substances (proteids) closely related to the life of the cell 

 and of the organism. A man of Dr. Wooldridge' s capacity 

 and origmality could not long remain trammelled by the 

 traditions of academic science. Although he received a 

 very full academic training (and his early original work on 

 the blood bears the impress of this training), he soon dis- 

 covered new paths of research, and elucidated facts 

 combating old ideas, and shedding light on the pheno- 

 mena of life. It was perhaps inevitable that so original 

 a man should come into conflict with what may be called 

 the " academic mind " ; the man of great originality 

 always does. What happened to Dr. Wooldridge in this 

 respect is stated very clearly, and not too forcibly, in the 

 excellent introduction to this volume by Prof. Victor 

 Horslej\ It is only necessary here to state that although 

 Wooldridge's work was appreciated on the continent, his 

 Croonian lecture, embodying his views on the coagula- 

 tion of the blood, was refused publication by the Royal 

 Society. It is not wise, perhaps, to lay too much stress 

 on this error of judgment, but it may be said that 

 Wooldridge did not publish papers containing visionary 

 ideas, but all his conclusions were based on well-con- 

 ducted experiments, and that he was a modest and sincere 

 seeker after truth. His work, in spite of the drawbacks 

 and disappointments of his short life, is now beginning to 

 be appreciated, and in two or three directions he led 

 the way to discoveries which are of great importance to 

 physiological and pathological science. 



It would be out of place here to give anything like a 

 full synopsis of the scientific work done by Wooldridge. 

 It may be said that his chief work dealt with the pheno- 

 mena of the coagulation of the blood : phenomena clearly 

 showing the passage of a living tissue into a dead. The 

 investigation of such phenomena is in many respects 

 more difficult and complicated than a purely physical or 

 chemical research ; for in a chemical study of so compli- 

 cated a liquid as the living blood, the mere separation 

 of one of its constituents may so alter its nature as to 

 lead to a misapprehension of its real properties. This 

 was clear to Wooldridge during the whole course of his 

 work. The phenomena of the coagulation of the blood 

 NO. 1265, VOL. 49] 



was explained by Alexander Schmidt and his pupils of 

 the Dorpat school, as consisting in the action of a " fer- 

 ment " on a proteid body called fibrinogen; the chief 

 change in the blood preceding the formation of fibrin 

 being a destruction of the white corpuscles. This theory 

 was taught in the schools, and accepted not as a final 

 explanation, but as a very probable explanation, the 

 chief idea being that a "ferment" was essential to pro- 

 duce coagulation. Now Wooldridge showed conclusively 

 by his experiments that a ferment is not necessary to co- 

 agulation ; he, in fact, separated from the blood plasma 

 a fibrinogen which became transformed into fibrin with- 

 out the aid of a ferment. This change he found in many 

 cases was accelerated by lecithin. Wooldridge viewed 

 coagulation as a change occurring in the plasma of the 

 blood, and not so much in the white corpuscles ; his 

 ideas, therefore, were in direct opposition to those of the 

 Dorpat school, and have been in part confirmed by sub- 

 sequent researches. For all the details of his work in 

 this respect, his papers must be consulted ; mention 

 must, however, be made of his brilliant discovery of a 

 means of causing intra-vascular coagulation. 



It was known that by injecting a solution of peptone 

 into the circulation of certain animals the coagulation of 

 the blood was prevented when drawn from the body. No 

 method was known by which the blood could be made to 

 coagulate in the vessels during life. Wooldridge dis- 

 covered that the injection of an extract of certain parts of 

 the body, e.g. the thymus gland, the testis, and lymphatic 

 glands, produced this. It isimpossible to overestimate this 

 result, since it throws light on the phenomena of coagula- 

 tion occurring in the vessels in many cases of disease. 

 The body producing this effect is a proteid and called 

 " tissue-fibrinogen." His study of this body, or bodies 

 (for there may be several closely allied), induced 

 Wooldridge, when he began to do work for the Medical 

 Officer of the Local Government Board, to see whether 

 it possessed any immunizing properties ; whether, in 

 fact, the profound change it produced in the blood was 

 unfavourable to the development of bacteria invading the 

 body. He found that in the case of the bacillus anthracis 

 that it had this property ; that in rabbits injected with 

 this tissue fibrinogen the death from anthrax (inoculated 

 at the same time) was delayed. Moreover, he found that 

 he could produce a better result if the bacilli were grown 

 for a short time in a solution of tissue fibrinogen. 

 There is no doubt that Wooldridge, in these experiments, 

 was the first worker who clearly showed the possibility of 

 chemical vaccination for infective disorders ; and there 

 is but little doubt that if he had lived to continue this 

 work, he would have clearly demonstrated what others 

 have since shown, viz. vaccination against a bacterial 

 disease by means of the chemical products of the specific 

 micro-organism. 



Sufficient has been said to show what the well-arranged 

 volume under consideration demonstrates at length — that 

 Wooldridge's work was of the highest order ; and it was 

 fitting that his scientific papers should be arranged by 

 Prof. Victor Horsley, who was Professor-Superintendent 

 of the Brown Institution when Wooldridge did much of 

 his work there, and by Dr. Ernest Starling, who succeeded 

 him as co-Lecturer at Guy's Hospital. 



