THE BLOOD. 95 



the pale complexion of the chlorotic will be seen gradually to 

 acquire the tone and colour indicative of health and strength. 



Effect of Disease upon the White Corpuscles. 



The white corpuscles of the blood have not hitherto 

 received that amount of attention which has been bestowed 

 by so many observers upon their associates the red corpuscles ; 

 indeed, it is only in these later times that their investigation 

 has been pursued with that degree of care, which, from their 

 importance, they so well merit, and observations are still 

 wanting upon their condition in states of disease. It has 

 already been remarked that an increase in their number has 

 been frequently observed to occur in various diseases, and 

 especially in such as are accompanied^by suppuration and great 

 exhaustion of the vital powers. Of the precise cause of this 

 increase no very satisfactory explanation has been offered, 

 and the following attempt at an explanation is presented to 

 the consideration of the reader with much hesitation. In most 

 serious disorders the function of nutrition and assimilation 

 is more or less impeded. Now, supposing that these white 

 corpuscles are essentially connected with nutrition, and that 

 while the cause which determines their formation still con- 

 tinues in operation, that which regulates their assimilation 

 is suspended, there would result, as an inevitable conse- 

 quence, an accumulation of the white corpuscles in the blood. 



Deficiency of Fibrin in Fevers, as in Typhus, Small-pox, 

 Scarlatina, Measles. 



The important researches of MM. Andral and Gavarret 

 establish the fact, that, in that much debated class of maladies, 

 fevers, there is a deficiency in the blood of its spontaneously 

 coagulable element, the fibrin. In the Essai d'Hematologie 

 no scale of the diminution in the amount of fibrin is given ; it is 

 shown, however, that in some fevers, and especially in the com- 

 mencement, the deficiency of fibrin may be but small ; and 

 that in others, particularly when symptoms of putridity have 



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