652 
MOTION IN THE BLOOD, 
took place simultaneously, both in the trunk and in the head, 
although the latter was on the other side of the Seine, and sepa¬ 
rated by the whole mass of the waters of the river, with the 
exception of the wire before-mentioned, and which was plunged 
a few decimetres into the stream. 
I leave this result of our experiment, published in “ The 
Journal of Galvanism/ 7 in order to speak of another fact observed 
at the same time in the arterial blood of the decapitated horse. 
While a boatman conveyed the head of the horse to the opposite 
bank, I received, in a long cylindrical glass, a portion of the 
blood as it flowed from the carotid arteries, and 1 was surprised 
at the peculiar and manifest motion of the globules or molecules 
of that blood. I attributed it, at first, to the continuation of the 
circulatory action. In order to judge more correctly of the cause 
of this molecular movement in the fluid blood, I inclined the 
glass gently, and poured half of the blood contained in the 
glass on the end of a fixed plank, and then, with my naked eye, 
assisted by a lens of no great power, I saw, and not without 
agreeable surprise, that each globule or molecule of blood w r as 
endowed with a particular movement—a sort of life that was 
peculiar to itself, and which could not depend upon the circu¬ 
latory action. They were agitated in different ways, they moved 
in different directions, and some seemed to be considerably 
heavier than others. In proportion as the blood became solid, 
and was beginning to form itself into a clot, the motion of the 
globules diminished, and each left behind it a sort of track or 
train in the sero-albuminous portion of the blood, in which 
nothing of this motion could be detected. 
I thought that in the microscopic researches of Leeuwenhoeck, 
and other philosophers of that date, on the nature of the blood, this 
movement of the globules, and the tracks which they left behind 
them, would have led to the belief that they were animalculae;—in 
the existence of which no one in the present day has any faith. 
This first observation engaged me in other researches, the notes 
of which were lost, with other papers, in consequence ol the occu¬ 
pation of my farm at the battle of Montereau. I had varied my re¬ 
searches into this motion of the globules of blood, and had found, 
1st. That it was not at all perceptible in venous blood. 2d. That 
it was in the arterial blood, and most of all in that from the 
temporal artery, and in direct proportion with the health and 
vigour of the animal. In an Arab horse of the Prince of 
Neuchatel, the arterial blood from the temporal artery exhibited 
these globular motions very sensibly for between ten and eleven 
minutes. 3d. These movements could not be observed either in 
the lymph or the chyle. 4th. In horses weakened by adynamic 
diseases, or cruel operations, or abstinence, and particularly 
