On the corpuscles of the blood / by Martin Barry. Pts. [I]-III.

  • Martin Barry
Date:
1840-1841
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the corpuscles of the blood / by Martin Barry. Pts. [I]-III. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    73. Professor Muller remarks, “ It is quite impossible to imagine the cause of the different forms of the red particles in the different classes of vertebrated animals. There are no similar elementary forms in the whole body-f~.” 74. It will be obvious that I cannot agree with the eminent physiologist now men- tioned, in the latter part of the quotation; the main object of this memoir having been to show that the blood-corpuscles are generated by a process of the same kind as that which I have elsewhere described. But I wish to ask attention in this place to the former part of the passage just quoted from Professor Muller,—as to the pos- sibility of imagining the cause of the different forms of the red particles in the dif- ferent classes of vertebrated animals ; for, perhaps some of the accompanying delinea- tions may assist us even here. 75. Dr. Young denied the existence of a nucleus in the corpuscle of human blood: Hewson believed it to be globular: Muller remarks, “And as this nucleus [of the blood-corpuscle] has under the microscope exactly the same appearance in the red particles of Birds and Fishes as in those of Amphibia, it would be expected to exist in those of Mammalia also. And although, on account of the minuteness of these bodies in Mammalia, it is more difficult to demonstrate the nucleus in them, I have with an excellent (Fraunhofer) microscope really seen it, and dis- tinctly. Even in the red particles of human blood, I have seen a minute, round, accurately defined nucleus, which had a more yellowish and shining aspect than the transparent part around it. The existence of the nucleus can also be demon- strated by the action of acetic acid, though much less distinctly than in the case of frog’s bloody.” 76. To me the appearances presented by the nucleus of the corpuscle in human blood, after the addition of acetic acid, were such as those represented in fig. 23: some of which, I think, are really sufficient to explain its usually biconcave form, and the difference in this respect between the blood-corpuscle of the Mammal and that of other Vertebrata. 77- I am very much inclined to believe, that in the many instances in which authors on “ cells” have described and figured more than one nucleolus in a nucleus, there has been either an incipient division of the nucleus into discs, or the nucleus has con- sisted of two or more discs: the nucleoli of those authors having been the minute and highly refracting cavities or depressions in the discsIf this has really been the case, it affords additional evidence, I think, that reproduction of cells by the pro- cess I have described—namely, division of the nucleus of a parent cell—is universal; so numerous have been the instances in question. I may refer to the figures given f Elements of Physiology, translated by Dr. William Baly, p. 146. t L. c„ pp. 100, 101. § The observer is very apt not to perceive that a nucleus is composed of more than one disc, because oi the refraction of light being very small at the part where the discs lie one against the other.