7 2 Researches Regarding Cholera : The Blood. [part i. 



a syrupy condition. The outer walls of the cells appear to adhere to one another 

 and to the margins of the interspaces, and the contents shrinking away and condensing 

 appear as small circular masses in the centre of empty irregular vacuoles in the 

 clot. 



Subsequently to the escape of the contents of the cells, there is in many cases 

 an abundant development of irregularly oval and rounded particles of various sizes 

 throughout the preparation. They are of various forms, globular, irregularly lobed, 

 and either scattered or arranged in pairs, trios or series (Fig. 6). Many of the series 

 are very complex and much ramified, whilst others consist of linear series, each 

 member of which is smaller than its predecessor. The nature of these bodies 

 remains quite uncertain. Beyond a certain increase in size they have not been 

 observed to undergo any further development, and in many cases they are probably 

 of an oily nature. When of such a nature, they are from the first brightly 

 refractive and perfectly structureless, and are ultimately, at the close of one or two 

 months from the commencement of observation, resolved into oily flakes and strings, 

 the latter of which might easily be mistaken for vibriones or fungal threads, more 

 especially when they begin to break up into rows of separate oil globules. 



In others, however, this does not appear to be the case, as they may in these 

 instances be observed to become finely molecular, so that the preparation is 

 ultimately crowded with minute molecular patches of various forms (Fig. 6). It is 

 possible that the latter bodies may be the escaped, so-called " vacuoles " of the 

 bioplasts. These are always surrounded with a portion of more or less condensed 

 material, which would be likely to persist after the solution of the surrounding softer 

 material. 



As is frequently the case in preparations of blood kept under continuous observa- 

 tion in the same way as the above, milky spots, due to the appearance of small 

 homogeneous circular bodies, may be observed in some numbers in the fluid, but 

 they have not been seen to undergo any further development, and, as a rule, do not 

 persist long. 



After the appearance of the particles above described, the only further change 

 noted has been a gradual disintegration of all the elements of the preparation ; and, 

 although the latter have frequently been kept for weeks under observation, no further 

 development has taken place, and with very few and accidental exceptions, there 

 has been no appearance of recognizable fungal, or bacterial elements in them. 



It now remains to make a few remarks on the principal points of interest in 

 connection with these observations. The conveniences afforded by a tropical climate 

 for any such series of observations as these are very great, as the temperature as a 

 rule is sufficiently high to secure that the activity of the bioplasts contained in the 

 blood is not too rapidly checked. During a period of frequent observation in the 

 course of the past season the thermometer ranged from a maximum of 98*2° F. to a 

 minimum of 763° F. 



