260 LECTURE XL 



extravasated or remains for a long time stagnant within 

 the vessels. Such changes undoubtedly lead to a de-- 

 struction of the corpuscles, so that in the case of the cir- 

 culating blood also the conclusion may with great proba- 

 bility be drawn, that the bodies in question are not young 

 forms, engaged in development, but on the contrary old 

 ones in process of decay. I agree therefore essen- 

 tially with Karl Heinrich Schultz's view, who has de- 

 scribed these bodies under the name of melanic (mela- 

 nose) blood-corpuscles, and regards them as the precur- 

 sors of the moulting of the blood (Blutmauserung) pre- 

 paring for the really excrementitious transformations. 



There are certain conditions in which the number of 

 these corpuscles becomes extremely large. In very 

 healthy individuals very few of them are found, only in 

 the blood of the vena portae Schultz believes he has 

 always observed a considerable number. It is certain, 

 however, that there are diseased conditions in which their 

 number becomes so large, that a greater or smaller quan- 

 tity of them is met with in nearly every drop of blood. 

 These conditions cannot however as yet be classed in de- 

 finite categories, because but little attention has been 

 excited with regard to them. They are found in slight 

 forms of intermittent fever, in cyanosis after cardiac dis- 

 ease, in typhoid-fever patients, in the fever accompany- 

 ing ichorous infection after operations, and in the course 

 of epidemic disorders, still always in such diseases as are 

 accompanied by a rapid exhaustion of the mass of blood 

 and give rise to cachectic and anaemic states. This is one 

 of the processes in which clinical observation also might 

 lead to the conclusion that an abundant destruction was 

 going on in the constituents of the blood within the ves- 

 sels. 



In addition to these changes we have precise know- 

 ledge concerning another class distinguished by quant ita- 



