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Lhe Adaptive Forms and Vortex-Motion of the Substance of the 
Red Blood-corpuscles of Vertebrates. 
By John A. Ryder. 
The fact that the red blood-corpuscles of vertebrates are discoidal 
or elliptical flattened bodies seems to have had very little of import 
to physiological writers. I shall now attempt to show that not 
only has the shape of these bodies very great physiological signifi- 
cance, but that these shapes are also adaptive. The attempt will 
also be made to show that it may be that there is a vortical flux of 
substance from the centre to the periphery, or from the periphery to 
the centre of every such corpuscle during life on both sides of it ; 
that, moreover, such a flux taken in conjunction with the viscosity 
of the substance of the corpuscle and its original or embryonic 
globular form is responsible for its shape. The flattening and vor- 
tical flux of the substance of the corpuscle may be regarded as 
adaptive physiological devices by means of which its respiratory 
efficiency is vastly increased. That such a flux has never been seen 
and may never be seen, owing to the practical impossibility of ob- 
serving these bodies in a perfectly normal living condition, is no 
proof that such a flux does not occur. Other practical difficulties 
also present themselves in the demonstration of the vortical flux of 
the substance of red blood-corpuscles, namely their optical homo- 
geneity, as a result of which also the very highest powers of the 
microscope become useless in this investigation, since the particles 
of the substance lie beyond the limits of microscopic vision and 
cannot therefore be differentiated microscopically so as to demon- 
strate such a motion, even were it possible to observe the corpuscle 
in an active living state under perfectly normal conditions. 
The first condition satisfied by the flattened form of the red 
blood-corpuscle is an increase of its superficial area. This would 
also be achieved if the corpuscle were elongated into a filament. 
But it can be shown that if these corpuscles were filaments they 
would inevitably tend to choke up or occlude the vessels, because 
of becoming tangled amongst one another and thus bringing the cir- 
culation toa stand-still with consequent death. It can also be shown, 
with all the rigor of mathematical demonstration, that the super- 
ficial area of a filament of the same volume as a disk of the same 
substance does not increase at anything like the same rate, if the 
