34 Th. Lewis, 



amœba), a considerable quantity of plasma is taken in with them, 

 giving' rise to the appearance in section of red cells lying in an empty 

 space. I cannot agree with Schumacher that vacuolation is charac- 

 teristic of certain phases in the destruction of an erythrocyte. 



On a careful examination of a number of eosin stained sections, 

 I have observed that many small red masses occur in the interior of 

 phagocytes or giant cells. These are of tivo varieties. The one variety 

 consists of oval pale bodies of the shape and size of red blood cor- 

 puscles, staining of the same depth of tint, or perhaps lees deeply than 

 the erythrocytes found in the surrounding sinus (pi. I. fig. 11 d.e.f): 

 these are freshly ingested blood cells, of which there may be from 

 one to twenty in the interior of a single phagocyte (pi. I, fig. 11 d), 

 and one or more are often seen lying in a clear space, which may 

 be termed a vacuole (pi. I. fig. 11 c). A second variety of eosin stained 

 body is more conspicuous. They are more brightly stained, and are 

 usually spherical. They are more highly refractive and vary in size 

 from very minute globules to rounded masses twice the size of a 

 blood corpuscle (pi. I. fig. 11 g.h.j). They are, I consider, masses of 

 haemoglobin. The appearances seen in sections have led me to per- 

 form some comparative experiments on the staining power of equal 

 portions of ordinary defibrinated and laked blood. The results of 

 these experiments point to one of two conclusions: either that the 

 cell wall of an erythrocyte is not easily permeated by eosin, or that 

 hsemogiobin forms with a constituent of the cell protoplasm a com- 

 pound which has a weaker affinity for eosin, than haemoglobin itself. 



The first action of a phagocyte upon a red cell is probably there- 

 fore in the direction of liberating its contents, either by absorption or 

 rupture of the cell membrane; in either the result is the formation of 

 a spherical mass of haemoglobin. Several globules of haemoglobin may 

 run together to form a larger mass, or, as more frequently occurs, some 

 of the original globules break up into several smaller ones, any of 

 which may take on the spherical form. The more lightly stained 

 masses, which are probably unaltered erythrocytes, show considerable 

 constancy in shape and size. 



It is not unlikely that worn out or damaged cells, and not heal- 



