526 Transactions of the Society. 



Sctultze's corpuscles, so-called from their first observer. The 

 most careful investigation of these is that by a Fellow of this 

 Society, Dr. Osier,* who has given a full description of them, 

 with drawings. He observed them both within the blood-vessels 

 and in preparations on the slide under the Microscope, but he leaves 

 their nature and function quite undetermined, though his observa- 

 tions are valuable, inasmuch as he showed that whereas in 

 preparations under the Microscope they are found in masses, 

 within the blood-vessels they occur singly, isolated forms being 

 distributed throughout the blood-plasma. Though their appearance 

 should be familiar to every student of histology, they have un- 

 doubtedly often been mistaken for Bacteria, as obviously is the case 

 in the recent report of one of the most important investigations 

 of the day, to which I have just referred — a circumstance 

 which fully justifies their careful examination and description in 

 this relation. In size they are very variable, from half the diameter 

 of a red corpuscle to very much less. In shape many are spherical 

 or discoid, some pyriform, or more exactly, shaped like a comma, 

 or spermatozoon-like, as Osier terms them ; others quite irregular. 

 Some appear distinctly coloured as the red corpuscles, though paler, 

 from their smaller size or thickness. 



I have made frequent and prolonged examination of these 

 bodies, and can state from my own observations, that they are not 

 independent organisms or microphytes, as has been supposed, and 

 I believe that a large portion of them at least, are mere debris, 

 disintegrated red corpuscles ; they may be indefinitely increased in 

 numbers, with identically similar forms, by treating a preparation of 

 blood on the slide with a 10 per cent, solution of sulphuric acid ; 

 though somewhat strangely, this has been stated to be a good 

 preservative fluid for the red corpuscles. 



It has been shown by Eiess that they have a pathological 

 significance, in so far that they vary in number in different states 

 of health ; it also seems to me that they increase and diminish at 

 certain periods of the day, as do the white corpuscles ; both these 

 conditions agree with the view that they are disintegration products ; 

 and if this be so, their numbers would probably be enormously 

 increased in cholera and similar wasting diseases, in the abnormally 

 active metabolism of the tissues. On the other hand, however, 

 they appear to have been regarded by some as representing an 

 early stage of the development of the red corpuscles, the so-termed 

 haematoblasts, but the description of these is so vague that it is 

 difficult to arrive at any conclusion respecting them. 



It appears to me, however, that in many cases in the descrip- 

 tions of these corpuscles hitherto published, bodies of two different 

 characters have been classed together, the one of regular discoidal 



* Proc. Koy, Soc, xxii. (1874) pp. 391-8, and Mon. Micr, Jouru., 1874. 



