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RICKETS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 
sembling leucocytes, but usually smaller and more trans- 
parent. They have sometimes found twelve to fifteen, in 
the field of Nachet^s No. 7 at one time, in liquid which some 
days before did not show a single one ; and these cellules 
have never exhibited the characters of organs in proliferation, 
such as scission or budding. On the contrary, they have often 
seen very pale cells scarcely indicated by the micro-ferments 
agglomerated in spheres and motionless, and others more 
sharply defined, and further on true leucocytes. 
From the preceding facts the writers conclude that the 
blood-globubles are aggregates of micro-ferments ( mycro - 
zyvnas ) ; that these microzymas can develop in chaplets of 
beads, into bacteria, or bacterides, &c. ; that they behave 
like ferments ; that the microzymas of blood-globules give 
birth to cells like leucocytes, and to other smaller cells, 
more resembling the globules. These microzymas are thus 
capable, in various media, of engendering cells, and so lead 
us to believe that the globule of blood, as an organism, is 
the result of the work of these mere micro-ferments. 
Amongst other things which they conclude— somewhat 
hastily — is, that respiration belongs to the class of phe- 
nomena termed fermentation . — Monthly Microscopical Journal. 
RICKETS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 
Rickets is not a favourite disease with English veteri- 
narians, if we may judge from the scantiness of literature on 
the subject ; and yet it is a malady of considerable import- 
ance to stockowners, for we find numerous brief references 
to its prevalence under certain conditions amongst young 
domesticated animals of almost 1 every kind. Perhaps it is 
because the comparatively incurable deformity strikes the 
attention more than the preventible disease, and because 
acute diseases claim, on the whole, more attention from the 
veterinary surgeon than those of long duration, that we 
have not any exhaustive account of rickets in the lower 
animals. A prize essay on rickets would be a great acqui- 
sition, we should think, to the journal of the Royal Agricul- 
tural Society. 
The deformity is the feature of rickets to which chief 
1 Dr. Dick, in vol. xviii of the Pathological Society’s 'Transactions/ 
affirms that rickets occurs only in animals which live chiefly on animal food. 
We cannot altogether agree with this statement, for there are numerous 
references to rachitic calves, lambs, pigs, and poultry, in various works on 
diseases of rnimals. 
