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EFFECTS OF FLUIDS UPON THE RED CORPUSCLES. 141

The reverse is the case when we employ diluted fluids. The more dilufed the fluid, the more does the blood-corpuscle enlarge; it swells up and becomes paler. On treating blood-corpuscles, which have become smaller from the action of concentrated fluids, with water, we see them pass back from the globular into the angular form, and from this into the discoidal one; after which they continually become more and more globular, often assume very peculiar shapes, and again grow paler. This process may, if the dilution of the blood be effected with great precaution, be continued until the blood-corpuscles scarcely seem to retain a trace of colour, though they still remain visible. In ordinary cases, when much liquid is added at once, such a violent revolution is produced in the economy of the blood-corpuscle, that an escape of the hæmatine immediately ensues. We then obtain a red solution, in which the colouring matter is free and dissolved in the fluid. I call your attention to this peculiarity, because it is continually occurring in the course of investigations, and because it explains one of the most important phenomena in the formation of pathological deposits of pigment, in which we meet with a precisely similar escape of hæmatine from the blood-corpuscles (Fig. 54, a). The expression generally made use of under such circumstances is, that the blood-corpuscles are dissolved, but it has long been a well-known fact, that, as was first shewn by Carl Heinrich Schultz, although there apparently no longer exist any cells, yet their membranes may, by means of an aqueous solution of iodine, again be rendered visible, whence it is evident that it was only the high degree of distension and the extraordinary thinness of the membranes which prevented the corpuscles from being seen. Indeed, very violent action on the part of substances chemically different is required, in order to effect a real destruction of the blood-corpuscles. If, immediately after they have been

treated with a very concentrated solution of salt, water be added in large quantity, we may succeed in bringing things to such a pass that the contents of the corpuscles are abstracted without their swelling up, and their membranes remain behind visible. This was the reason why Denis and Lecanu asserted that the blood-corpuscles contained fibrine; for they believed that, by treating them first with salt and then with water, they were able to demonstrate its presence in them. This so-called fibrine is, however, as I have shewn, nothing more than the membranes of the bloodcorpuscles; real fibrine is not contained in them, although their walls are certainly composed of a substance which has more or less affinity to albuminous matters, and may, when obtained in large masses, present appearances reminding one of fibrine.

Now with regard to the substances contained in the blood-corpuscles, they happen quite recently to have become invested with great interest in consequence of the more morphological products which have been observed to arise out of them, and which have produced a kind of revolution in the whole theory of the nature of organic matters. I refer here to the peculiar forms of coloured crystals, which can, under certain circumstances, be obtained from the colouring matter of the blood, and which have acquired not only on their own account great chemical, but also very considerable practical, interest. We have already become acquainted with three different kinds of crystals, of which hæmatine seems to be the common origin.

To the first form, with which I at one time busied myself much, I have given the name of Hamatoidine. This is one of the most frequent of metamorphic products, and is spontaneously formed in the body out of hæmatine, and that indeed often in such large quantities that its excretion can be perceived with the naked eye. This substance in its perfect form presents itself in the shape of oblique

HÆMATOIDINE.

FIG. 53.

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rhombic columns, and is of a beautiful yellowish-red, or frequently, when in thicker pieces, deep ruby-red, colour, and forms one of the most beautiful crystals we are acquainted with. In little plates too it is not uncommonly met with, and frequently bears a considerable resemblance to the crystalline forms of uric acid. In the majority of cases the crystals are very small, not merely microscopical, but even somewhat difficult of observation with the microscope. A man must either be a very keen observer, or provided with special preparatory knowledge, else he will frequently discover in the spots where the hæmatoidine is lying nothing more than little streaks, or an apparently shapeless mass. But, upon more accurate inspection, the streaks resolve themselves into minute rhombic columns, the mass into an aggregation of crystals. This substance may be considered as the regular, typical, ultimate form into which hæmatine is converted in any part of the body where large masses of blood continue to lie for any length of time. An apoplectic effusion in the brain, for example, cannot be repaired by any other process than by a large portion of the blood undergoing this form of crystallization, and if we afterwards find a coloured cicatrix at the spot, we may feel perfectly assured that the colour is dependent upon the presence of hæmatoidine. When a young woman menstruates, and the cavity of the Graafian vesicle, from which the ovum has been extruded, becomes filled with coagulated blood, the hæmatine is gradually converted into hæmatoidine, and we afterwards find at the spot where the ovum had lain, the beautiful deep-red colour of the hæmatoidine crystals, which remain as the last memorials of this episode. In this manner we

Fig. 53. Crystals of Hæmatoidine in different forms (Comp. Archiv f. path. Anat.,' vol. i, p. 391, plate iii, fig. 11). Magnified 300 diameters.

can count the number of apoplectic attacks, or calculate how often a young girl has menstruated. Every extravasation may leave behind its little contingent of hæmatoidine

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crystals, and these, once formed, remain in the interior of the organ, in the shape of compact bodies endowed with the greatest powers of resistance.

With respect to the peculiarities of hæmatoidine, it has, in a theoretical point of view, another special claim to our interest, from its presenting to us a series of properties, which render it conspicuous as the only substance in the body, at least, that we are as yet acquainted with, which is allied to the colouring matter of the bile (Cholepyrrhine). By the direct action of mineral acids, or after previous treatment and preparation by means of alkalies, the same, or precisely similar, colour-tests are obtained, which are yielded by the colouring matter of the bile when treated with mineral acids, and it seems also from other facts, that we have here a body before us, which is very intimately connected with the

Fig. 54. Pigment from an apoplectic cicatrix in the brain (Archiv,' vol. i, pp. 401, 454, plate iii, fig. 7). a. Blood-corpuscles which have become granular and are in process of decolorization. 6. Cells from the neuroglia, some of them provided with granular and crystalline pigment. c. Pigment-granules. d. Crystals of Hæmatoidine. f. Obliterated vessel with its former channel filled with granular and crystalline red pigment. 300 diameters.

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colouring matter of the bile. This circumstance derives its especial interest from its being supposed, for other reasons also, that the coloured constituents of the bile are products of the decomposition of the red colouring matter of the blood. In the interior of extravasations there really does arise a yellowish red substance which may be designated as a newly formed kind of biliary colouring matter.

The second kind of crystals which arise out of hæmatine was discovered later; they are very similar to the preceding ones, but differ from them in that they do not occur as a spontaneous product in the body, but must be artificially produced.

FIG. 55.

They are more of a dark brownish colour and usually form flat rhombic plates with more acute angles; they are in an extraordinary degree capable of resisting tests, and also do not, when acted upon by the mineral acids, exhibit the peculiar play of colours afforded by hæmatoidine. This second kind of crystals has received the name of Hæmine from their discoverer Teichmann. Quite recently Teichmann has himself begun to entertain doubts as to whether it is not really a sort of hæmatine. These forms do not present as yet the slightest pathological interest, but, on the other hand, they have proved of very great importance in forensic medicine on account of their having been recently employed as one of the surest tests for the examination of blood-stains. I myself have been in a position to make experiments of this sort in forensic cases. For this purpose the best mode

Fig. 55. Crystals of Hæmine, artificially procured from human blood. 300 diameters.

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