290 The Structure of Colored Blood- Corpuscles.. 



he himself had seen, and at least so far as red corpuscles of 

 the blood of salamanders are concerned, positively declared 

 a membrane normally to exist. 1 As proof of the existence of a 

 membrane and of its taking no part in the formation of blood- 

 crystals, Bryanowski refers to his success in demonstrating 

 it by means of distilled water. 2 - OwsjanniJcbw says: "To 

 prove with certainty the existence of the membrane is no 

 easy task. Preparations occur which seem to be convincing 

 that there is no membrane ; but other preparations show it 

 without the addition of any reagent. The interior contents 

 retract away from it, so that between it and the yellowish 

 colored contents an empty space remains. Still more dis- 

 tinctly than in pure blood is the membrane seen on the addi- 

 tion of a weak solution of sugar, either without or with ad- 

 mixture of a little alcohol. Then it appears in many or per- 

 haps in most of the blood-corpuscles." Furthermore, he 

 describes interior crystallization in which he has seen the 

 membrane pushed out lengthwise by a crystal, and other 

 cases in which " the membrane becomes very distinctly visi- 

 ble as it passes from nucleus to crystal." With high magnify- 

 ing power, he says, human red blood-corpuscles not seldom 

 show a very delicate membrane ; and one of his conclusions 

 is : " In the blood corpuscles of most animals an independ- 

 ent membrane can be proved to exist, which behaves toward 

 serum, water, etc., differently than the cell contents and 

 which occasionally possesses considerable firmness."? Rich- 

 ardson argued 4 in favor of the same view, mainly on account 

 of experiments upon the gigantic blood disks of the Meno- 

 branchus, in which "crystals of hsemato-crystallin were seen 

 to prop out a visible membranous capsule." More recently, 

 Richardson exhibited before the members of the Section on 



(1) " TJeber amoeboide Blutkorperchen." Virchow's Archiv. vol. 30 (1864). p. 437. 



(2) " Beobachtungen iiber die Blutkryetalle." Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftlicheZoologie, 

 vol. XII, Heft 3 (Nov. 17, 1862), p. 317. 



(3) "Zur Hietologie der Blutkorperchen." Bulletin de l'Academie des Sciences de St. 

 Petersbourg. t. VIII. (1855), pp. 564, 568, 569 and 570. 



(4) "On the Cellular structure of the red blood-corpuscle." Transactions of the American 

 Medical Association for 1870, pp. 259-271. 



