RESEARCHES ON THE COAGULATION OF BLOOD. 101 
nor very difficult to cure. At home, in my experience, it 
was rare to save a well-bred short-horn ; whilst a low-bred 
Irish cow would generally recover. 
“ Should it be necessary, I may, perhaps, with your per¬ 
mission, indicate the means to be adopted for the prevention 
and management of this formidable disease. 
“ I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
“ W. B. S ” 
Geelong ; September 16. 
FURTHER RESEARCHES ON THE COAGULATION OE THE 
BLOOD. 
By Joseph Lister, Esq., F.R.C.S. Eng. and Edinb. 
In a previous volume, vol xxxi, p. 454 et -seq., will be found 
some remarks by Mr. Lister, “on the causes of the coagula¬ 
tion of the blood, in diseases of the blood-vessels, taken from 
the 4 Edinburgh Journal of Medicine.’ The following, ex¬ 
tracted from the last number of the same journal, will be read 
with much interest, inasmuch as it was thought that the 
immediate cause of the coagulation of the blood had been 
at length discovered in the escape of ammonia, or its carbonate 
from it. It is now, however, considered that this does not 
fully and satisfactorily explain the phenomenon. 
At the meeting of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of 
Edinburgh, held on the 16 th ult., a communication was made 
by Mr. Lister to the following effect: 
“ Mr. President,—I take this opportunity of demonstrating 
what appears to be a point of considerable importance with 
reference to the coagulation of the blood,—a subject to which 
my attention has been again directed by the recurrence of 
that period of the Session in which the fundamental principles 
of pathology are discussed in a course of surgical lectures. 
“ I may remind the Fellows of this Society that, in a paper 
which I had the honour to read before them the Session before 
last,* I brought forward facts which seemed to prove that the 
ammonia theory does not apply to blood within the vessels of a 
living animal. That theory, as my hearers are doubtless aware, 
asserts that the fluidity of the blood depends upon the pre¬ 
sence of a certain amount of free ammonia holding the fibrine 
in solution, and that coagulation is the necessary result of 
the escape of the volatile alkali. But it was shown in the 
paper referred to, that the blood, in man and other mam- 
* Vide ‘Edinburgh Medical Journal,’ April, 1858. 
