24 7 
upon the movement of the molecules, as I have rarely been 
able to find cells in which they continued to move after the 
nuclei became at all coloured. 
In examining some urine, obtained on the 8th of August, 
1868, near my late residence, in Western New York, from 
a patient who complained of severe pain in the kidneys and 
bladder, I was surprised to find that a deposit, which 
appeared to the naked eye purulent, was chiefly composed of 
cells, exactly resembling in form, size, definite cell-wall, con- 
tained nuclei, and actively revolving molecules, the salivary 
corpuscles with which I had become so familiar ; and should 
have imagined that these proceeded from an accidental adul- 
teration with sputum, had I not been fortunate enough to 
have ocular demonstration to the contrary when procuring 
the specimen. I examined these corpuscles repeatedly in the 
course of the two following days, during which the movements 
of the molecules continued, but could make nothing else of 
them except drawings, which I carefully preserved. 
On consulting the text-books to which I had access, I found 
that neither Beale, Roberts, Bird, nor Naubauer and Vogel, 
in their works on the urine, mentioned cells such as those 
above described, although the editors of the ‘ Micrographic 
Dictionary,’ in their description of the salivary corpuscles, 
state that they have seen them by myriads in the renal 
secretion ; nevertheless, numerous specimens examined 
during the following few months, seldom without special 
scrutiny for similar bodies, afforded none, until in a deposit 
occurring from urine brought me by a medical friend about 
December 1st, the corpuscles I had so long been in search of 
were at last recognised, and on this occasion I was able to 
exhibit them to several microscopists, among others to my 
friend, Dr. II. C. Wood, Jr., Prof, of Botany, in the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania. 
On the 5th of December I procured a sample of urine 
from a case of cystitis, which had only been passed a few 
hours, and on placing it under the field of the -J-th, I found 
many of the pus-globules exhibiting the amoebaform move- 
ments described by Dr. Beale in his late elaborate work on 
the “ Microscope in Practical Medicine no corpuscles con- 
taining moving molecules were visible, but observing that 
some of the pus-cells having a spherical outline were almost 
opaque and only about j-oVoth °f an inch in diameter, it 
occurred to me that they were perhaps only contracted by 
the exosmose of their fluid contents into the surrounding 
denser medium, and the idea suggested itself to try the 
effect of diminishing the specific gravity of the urine by the 
