164 
.T. L. ROBERTSON. 
The best description, I think, will be found in a brochure 
published by M. Ed. Nocard, Professeur de Clinique a l’Ecole 
Veterniare d’Alfort. 
Personally I can add nothing to his published descriptions, 
and I have chosen this subject in order to give a slight description 
of the disease, in the hope that members of the society may look 
up some cases. The history of the disease is an incomplete one in 
human medicine, and we are far from knowing much of it in our 
own branch; but it is a subject that would repay investigation by 
one fortunate enough to make a diagnosis during life, and not a 
surprise of the dissecting room. 
As the disease has generally for its most striking feature the 
permanent increase of the white corpuscles, it may be well to 
speak of their supposed origin and fate, and of the changes the 
blood undergoes. They exist in ordinary blood in the proportion 
of 1 to 800-1,000 red, increasing after a meal to 1-300-400. 
They seem to take their origin in lymphatic glands and other 
adenoid structures. At least corpuscles similar if not identical with 
colorless blood cells are to be seen in various sizes, many with 
double nuclei, and some, indeed, actually dividing into two corpus¬ 
cles. The lymph is continually passing into Die blood a number 
of white corpuscles, which appear in the lymphatic vessels after 
they have traversed the lymphatic glands. As to their fate, it 
would seem probable that they give rise to red corpuscles. Num¬ 
bers of them die in the blood and are broken up, and when parts 
become inflamed they migrate, and would seem to produce con¬ 
nective tissue cells and fibres, blood vessels, Ac. 
The blood in leucocythemia, when drawn from a vein, is pale, 
serous, and if received on a flat vessel is soon covered by a grayish 
pellicle. In a narrow test tube, and kept at a low temperature, it 
separates in two layers, the upper milky-grayish white, the lower 
red. 
Leucocythemia may be defined as a general disease, charac r 
terized by the hyperplastic, or heteroplastic development of lym¬ 
phoid tissue, with or without increase of the white blood cells, 
has always a progressive anaemia, and is generally fatal. 
The Visceral Lesions.— They consist of neoplasms, of which 
