106 Mr. Gulliver’s Observations on the Blood Corpuscles 
or the alteration of form in the disks, may generally be ob- 
served even in the course of a minute or two after the mix- 
ture. Nor is the serum of one animal always proper to di- 
lute the blood of another; for I could seldom get the cor- 
puscles of the carnivora, or even of some ruminants, to mix 
well with the serum of the horse. 
If obtained from the body a day or two after death, the 
disks are generally so clustered together as to be seen very 
indefinitely in the wet state, although some of the smallest 
detached from the masses are often tolerably distinct. The 
corpuscles are mostly very irregular in size, approaching 
more to the spherical shape, and even more susceptible of 
alteration from any of the common methods of dilution, than 
in blood procured from the living animal. By drying, how- 
ever, a tolerably clear outline of the disks from the carcass 
may in most instances be procured, although every method 
sometimes fails, as I experienced a short time since in some 
blood from the Sloth Bear and from the Malay Sun Bear. 
Though the bodies of these animals were perfectly fresh, and 
the masses of fibrine in the heart and great vessels firmly 
coagulated, the particles of the blood were so much con- 
glomerated, and their size so singularly variable, that it was 
impossible either by drying or any method of dilution to ob- 
tain even an approximation to their average diameter; and 
yet some corpuscles procured from the living Sloth Bear did 
not exhibit such irregularities. 
Of the accidental circumstances by which the particles are 
liable to become enlarged, besides incipient putrefaction, the 
moistureof the atmosphere, of the breath, or of the hand are the 
most frequent. Dried or drying specimens are thus instantly 
injured or destroyed, the disks being more or less altered in 
shape and deprived of their colouring matter. But much de- 
pends on the degree in which these causes may have acted; 
for a diminution in the magnitude of the corpuscles may be 
the consequence. If, for example, some water be mixed with 
blood, the disks immediately become much enlarged and 
spherical, quickly losing their colouring matter; and yet 
if the whole of this be thus removed, after a while the outlines 
of the disks, very faint indeed, may frequently be recognised, 
diminished considerably in diameter and apparently quite flat. 
They may always be clearly seen by treating them with a 
strong solution of corrosive sublimate. The human blood 
corpuscles, thus enlarged at first, and then deprived of their 
colouring matter, and reduced in size, generally present a dia- 
meter of about 1 -4800th of an inch, whether detected in the 
pure water or rendered more apparent by the sublimate. 
