PART I.] Amoeba-like Movements of Some Corpuscles. 27 



A gentleman, with whose personal habits I am well acquainted, suddenly felt 

 some griping pains with inclination to go to stool, but was otherwise perfectly healthy. 

 The motion was very scanty and very diluted, but was followed by immediate relief. 

 It occurred to me to subject the stool to a microscopic examination, and, to my 

 surprise, these animalculse, both in the active and " still " stages, were present in the 

 most perfect condition, together with numerous globules of a fatty nature, exactly 

 similar to those already alluded to. A comparison of the figures here given (Plate 

 XVI, Figs. Ixii-iii) with ones previously described will, I think, be sufficient without 

 repeating that description. 



The next stool passed by this individual was also a relaxed one, and microscopically 

 of the same character, after which the motions were perfectly natural ; but, in 

 proportion as the motions became more solid, the ease with which these animalculse 

 could be found diminished. Many other ordinary evacuations were examined, and in 

 fully half, after more or less careful search, they were discovered. After a brisk 

 purgative they are frequently seen in great perfection. 



In alluding to the nature of the third class of bodies, namely, those found in the 

 meshes of the fibrillated substance composing the flakes in cholera evacuation, I wish to 

 premise that the remarks are reservedly made, as the subject belongs more directly to 

 the pathological anatomy of cholera, which subject forms a later part of the programme 

 drawn out for guidance in connection with this inquiry. It will, of course, be 

 understood that the corpuscles of the former three classes are also found with the 

 corpuscles forming this division ; indeed, it is frequently impossible to separate them, 

 especially from those amcebiform conditions of animalculse which are seen so frequently 

 in evacuations. This is probably the reason why so many different descriptions exist 

 of their appearance and of the action of re-agents. 



Now, the chief statement I have to make concerning the corpuscles of this class is that 

 they exhibit movements somewhat like the movem,ents associated with the am^mha. This 

 fact may, by very careful examination with a good ^th of an inch object-glass, be verified 

 by any one accustomed to the use of the microscope in most cholera stools when 

 perfectly fresh. A portion of the substance of the corpuscle is seen to creep out 

 insensibly from the mass, and as insensibly return : unless the eye is carefully fixed on 

 the body, and is already a more or less educated eye, the phenomenon is not detected, 

 and the observer enters it as " disintegrated epithelium " in his note-book. It may 

 perhaps be remarked that no drawing of columnar epithelium, said to be so universal 

 in cholera dejecta, appears in this report. The reason is that its presence, to an 

 appreciable extent, has not been observed in the contents of the intestines discharged 

 during life ; indeed, the only occasions on which I have been able to observe it quite 

 distinctly were in discharges voided a few minutes before death, a long interval having 

 elapsed since the occurrence of a previous stool. It was Boehm, I think, who first laid 



