DR. MARTIN BARRY ON THE CORPUSCLES OF THE BLOOD. 
245 
examined very attentively, it is seen to change its form ; and I am disposed to think 
it is this change of form that produces the alterations in position. The changes of 
form are slight, as compared with those referred to in par. 127, and are not seen 
without close attention. The motions resemble that called molecular, and in the 
minutest corpuscles, which are mere points, nothing besides molecular motion can 
be discerned. It may be a question, whether molecular motion differs in its nature 
from the motion of the larger corpuscles just referred to. The division of the blood- 
corpuscles into corpuscles of minuter size, though apparent in blood from either side 
of the heart, has seemed more general in that from the left side ; which is perhaps 
deserving of notice in connection with the subject of respiration. 
199. ( October , 1841.) As explanatory of the foregoing paragraph, I may perhaps 
be permitted to mention some appearances that have since fallen under my notice. 
It is necessary, however, to apprise the reader that the remarkable appearances about 
to be detailed are not all of them to be alwaj'S found ; and indeed that sometimes most 
if not all of them are absent. To what circumstances their presence or their absence 
is to be attributed, it would be premature at this time to speculate, without facts that 
are still wanted regarding the action of the atmospheric air upon the blood-corpuscles 
in their passage through the lungs ; and some unknown change which, from obser- 
vations not yet completed, I am inclined to think these corpuscles undergo in that 
portion of the circulating fluid which passes through the liver. Neither am I in pos- 
session of facts connected with the process of digestion, which may possibly influence 
the reproduction of the blood-corpuscle ; supposing this reproduction to be effected 
in the way suggested by the observations of the foregoing paper, and my previous 
memoirs. And here I am reminded to mention, that some of the animals from which 
the blood in question (after death) was taken, had not received food for many hours 
previously. Such were the sheep at the London slaughter-houses. In these instances, 
therefore, the minute objects about to be described cannot be referred to the forma- 
tion of chyle, and its addition to the mass of blood. 
Without attaching undue importance to the circumstance, it should be stated that 
the blood presenting the corpuscles about to be described, was taken from the left 
auricle, and therefore had recently passed the lungs. In the first place, I have at 
different times found that there exist corpuscles much larger than the rest, and a few 
of them of prodigious size (5V") . They are, as I have seen them, always very pale, 
and sometimes even colourless. They are obviously membranous at the surface. You 
sometimes see them ruptured, and partially discharged of their contents. In this 
state, they frequently appear shrivelled. When not ruptured they are distinctly filled 
with young corpuscles. Secondly. The young corpuscles after liberation from the 
parent corpuscle, and sometimes before that change, are seen to have acquired red 
colouring matter. When so liberated and individualized, they present a star-like 
form resembling that in figs. 104 and 105. This form I have in some instances 
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