86 On the Condition of the Blood 
been deprived of oxygen, as in suffocation and drowning. 
On the other hand, when animals have breathed an excess of 
oxygen, the blood coagulates with remarkable rapidity. 
Dr. Gairdner found the proportionate amount of fibrine 
corpuscles and albumen in the arterial blood of healthy 
rabbits to be— 
Fibrine, 1°65 
Corpuscle, 82°35 
Albumen, 46°30 
When other rabbits were made to breathe pure oxygen for 
half an hour, the proportion was— 
Fibrine, 2°40 
Corpuscle, 69°56 
Albumen, 40:23 
Ath. The blood as plus millions of cells. 
So large an amount of cells produced in so short a time 
fully accounts for the disorganization of the blood and death. 
But death occurs sometimes so rapidly, that it would appear 
impossible. for cells to be formed in so short atime. In 
which case we must consider the change in the blood to be 
brought about as rapidlyand inthe same manneras the change 
from starch into sugar under the action of ptyaline. It seems 
our only explanation. Quite as mysterious, indeed, is the more 
rapid change which takes place in the condition of the blood 
afterdeath by lightning. A case has lately occurred athome in 
which “the great veins were distended with very dark blood, 
everywhere perfectly fluid—not a symptom of a clot, neither 
did it show the slightest tendency to coagulate after its 
escape.” It does not however follow that a few minutes is 
too short a time for the blood to lose a quantity of oxygen 
sufficient to destroy life. For the germinal matter, if not 
checked in its growth, gains strength as it proceeds, vires 
acquirit eundo, and deprivation of oxygen for a few minutes 
is always fatal. 
Again the presence of these cells leads us to ask- whether 
they are in any way connected with fermentation ; if so it 
would strengthen, if not establish, the theory that fermen- 
tation is never excited except under the influence of 
microscopic organisms, and that, as affirmed by Pasteur and 
others, each particular organism sets up a particular species 
of fermentation, and we might add of animal or vegetable 
poisons its peculiar species of disease, and further, that in 
all- zymotic diseases these particular organisms should 
