ACTION OF SALTS ON THE RED CORPUSCLES. 397 



hereafter to be mentioned. The action of those salts which 

 produce no precipitate (common salt, Glauber's salt, sal am- 

 moniac, borax, magnesium chloride, and others) has been 

 repeatedly described, in contrast to the action of water, as a 

 shrivelling or contraction. Solutions of this nature cause 

 the blood corpuscles to become less glutinous and extensible, 

 their outline more distinct, their form curved, their surface 

 wrinkled, and their border dentated. Such are the effects of 

 moderately strong solutions of these salts. Very strong solu- 

 tions of some of these salts, or the addition of the salts them- 

 selves, in powder, to the blood (common salt, Glauber's salt, 

 magnesium chloride), only cause the blood corpuscles to shrink 

 in the first instance, but soon they become round and pale, so 

 that only colourless bodies remain.* In dilute solutions of 

 some of these salts, the concentration of which is about equal 

 to that of the blood serum, the corpuscles retain their characters 

 for some time without alteration. Solutions of this kind are 

 therefore frequently applied instead of serum for the purposes 

 of dilution. With still greater degrees of dilution effects are 

 produced similar to those that are observed when water is 

 added in quantity to the blood. 



A successive series of forms may frequently be observed to 

 occur in the nucleated elliptical blood disks, on the addition of 

 saline solutions of medium degrees of concentration, though 

 they cannot be certainly caused to appear. 



Hiihnefeldt and Hensenf have obtained and ' represented 

 forms similar to those above mentioned, by the agency of 

 ammonia and sal ammoniac. They may also be observed on 

 the applications of other saline solutions. They are almost 

 identical with those that have been already described as re- 

 sulting from the action of water (fig. 73). The blood corpuscles, 

 however, appear equably maculated, coloured and colourless 

 areas alternating with regularity ; or, as frequently occurs in 



* Kolliker, Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Zoologie, Band vii., p. 184. 

 Botkin, Virchow's Archiv, Band xv., p. 176. Bursy, Ifeber den Einfluss 

 einiger Sake aufdie Krystallisation des Blutes. " On the Influence of some 

 Salts on the Crystallization of the Blood." Inaug. Diss. Dorpat, 1863. 



t Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliclw Zoologie, Band ix.,, p. 261. 



