7 



326 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



blood thus initiated does (as it seems to do) suffice to o-ive 

 rise to the germs and fungus-growths which afterwards 

 constitute such all-important elements of the disease. 

 The former is the view which has been most widely 

 adopted : and yet two of the ablest writers on muscar- 

 dine, after the most careful investigations with reference 

 to this very point, came to the opposite conclusion. 

 These observers, who adopted, in its entirety, the belief 



F 



in the possibility of engendering muscardine de novo^^ 



were M. Guerin-Meneville and M. Robinet. 



Th 



^ 



U 



conclusions of the former especially were based upon 

 positive and apparently unambiguous observations. 



The blood-corpuscles of the silk-worm during life are 

 elliptic or more or less elongated^ but after death they 

 are always found to be spherical. When a little blood 

 is abstracted from a healthy worm, the corpuscles are 



elongated 



at first 



though they speedily assume the 



spherical condition ; and, when in this latter state^ they 

 begin to exhibit amc^boid protrusions^ although such 

 changes of shape are never seen in healthy blood- 

 corpuscles immediately after they have been drawn from 

 the body. M. Guerin-Meneville observed that in dead 

 silk-worms, and also in the cases where blood had 

 been drawn from living animals during the very early 

 stages of the disease, the spherical amoeboid cor- 

 puscles contained much larger granulations than usual ; 

 and that some of them tended towards the periphery 

 of the corpuscles, from which they ultimately made 

 their exit. These little bodies were ovoid, and from 



J 



1 





I 



I 



u 



((. 



tie Deve! 

 sieriiig from 



■ ^^Pfecal and ai 

 '■ "'■* particles 



^^"^ of htry, 



^tli gradual 



for 



increas 



■ 



i ? W be 



"liilll. 



N\ 



le 



C( 



as 





