On the identity of the white corpuscles of the blood with the salivary, pus, and mucous corpuscles / by Joseph G. Richardson.

  • Richardson, Joseph Gibbons, 1836-1886
Date:
[between 1860 and 1869?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the identity of the white corpuscles of the blood with the salivary, pus, and mucous corpuscles / by Joseph G. Richardson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    a patient who complained of severe pain in the kidneys and bladder, I was surprised to find that a deposit, which ap- peared to the naked eye purulent, was chiefly composed of cells, exactly reserabhng in form, size, definite cell-wall, con- tained nuclei, and actively revolving molecules, the salivary corpuscles with which I had become so familiar; and should have imagined that these proceeded from an accidental adulteration with sputum, had I not been fortunate enough to have ocular demonstration to the contrary when procuring the specimen. I examined these corpuscles repeatedly in the course of the two following days, during which the movements of the molecules continued, but could make nothing else of them except drawings, which I carefully preserved. On consulting the text-books to which I had access, I found that neither Beale, Roberts, Bird, nor ]!^^aubauer and Vogel, in their works on the Urine, mentioned cells such as those above described, although the editors of the Micrographic Dictionary, in their description of the salivary corpuscles, state that they have seen them by myriads in the renal secretion; nevertheless, numerous specimens examined during the following few months, seldom without special scrutiny for similar bodies, aftbrded none, until in a deposit occurring from urine brought me by a medical friend about December 1st, the corpuscles I had so long been in search of were at last recognized, and on this occasion I was able to exhibit them to several microscopists, among others to my friend, Dr. H. C. Wood, Jr., Prof, of Botany, in the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. On the 5th of December I procured a sample of urine from a case of cystitis, which had only been passed a few hours, and on placing it under the field of the i^^th, I found many of the pus-globules exhibiting the amoebaform move- ments described by Dr. Beale in his late elaborate work on the Microscope in Practical Medicine; no corpuscles con- taining moving molecules were visible, but observing that some of the pus-cells having a spherical outline were almost opaque and only about ^xjutj^^ of inch in diameter, it