SCIENCE 
IS 
KNOWLEDGE. 
KNOWLEDGE. 
IS 
POWER, 
A PRACTICAL JOURNAL OF 
HOME ARTS. 
Vol. VI. 
NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1883. 
No. 1. 
Blood Under the Microscope. 
F all the strange 
things revealed by 
the microscope, 
none are more won- 
derful than those 
which have been 
discovered in con- 
nection with blood. 
To ordinary vision 
the bloods of differ- 
ent animals appear 
nearly alike. They appear as a red liquid, 
differing somewhat in color, etc., under 
varying conditions, but substantially the 
same under all. Other red liquids, such 
as the red juice of fruit, red paint, etc., 
have often been mistaken for blood, and 
in some cases it would be almost impossi- 
ble to prove that they were not blood 
without the aid of the microscope. There 
are various animal fluids, which, if 
properly colored by vegetable colors, 
might deceive even experts; but when? 
placed under an ordinary ten dollar mi- 
croscope they at once reveal their true 
characters, and show an entire absence 
of those peculiar elements which are 
always found in blood. 
If we take a speck of blood, such as we 
may obtain by pricking the finger with a 
pin, or causing some scratch to bleed 
afresh, and after placing it on a glass 
slide, spread it out very thinly by draw- 
ing another piece of glass or a knife blade 
across it, we shall obtain the appearance 
presented in the figure on the next page,, 
when we place the slide under a micro- 
scrope with a magnifying power of one to 
three hundred diameters. Here we see- 
some of the corpuscles lying flat, so as to> 
show their round, disc-like sides, as at 
a, a, while others are turned up edgewise 
and look like t», h. Sometimes the cor- 
puscles cling together like rolls of coim 
or rouleaux, as they are called, and then 
they appear as shown at c, c. There are- 
more corpuscles shown in rouleaux in the 
engraving than usually occur when a, 
drop of blood is taken from a person m 
good health, but the form and appear- 
ance of the corpuscles are very well 
shown, and they are the elements whicbi 
