Volume 1

Quain's anatomy / edited by William Sharpey, Allen Thomson and John Cleland.

  • Jones Quain
Date:
1864-1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quain's anatomy / edited by William Sharpey, Allen Thomson and John Cleland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    measure to the product, he names, fibrinoyenous substance, the other yi?«-mo- 2)lastic substance. In the coagulation of hydrocele-fluid, the former, or fibrinogen, is already there, while the fibrinoplastin is supplied from the blood. It is not that the latter converts albumen into fibrin, for after a certain amount of fibrin has been coagulated from the serous fluid no further addition will generate more, although abundance of albumen remains ; and again, a given quantity of fibrinoplastin wUl not coagulate with equal rapidity and intensity any amount of fluid containing fibrinogen. In short, the fibriuoplastic substance seems not to operate as a ferment or by catalysis, but by combining with the other necessary ingredient. Now Schmidt has shown that the fibrinoplastic matter presents all the chemical characters of globulin, and is in fact nothing else than that substance. Accordingly he finds, as already stated, that blood-crystals are highly fibriuo- plastic. This globulin is not restricted to the red corpuscles ; it exudes from them into the plasma in the coagulation of the blood, and a residual portion remains in the serum when the process is over; globulin doubtless exists also iu the pale corpuscles. Nor is it confined to the blood. From chyle and lymph, from the aqueous humour of the eye and Avatery extract of the cornea, from the vitreous humour and crystalline lens, from connective tissue, and from saliva and synovia, a substance may be obtained having the same re-actions and the same fibrinoplastic power. Fibrinogen may be thrown down from hydrocele-fluid by a mixture of alcohol and ether ; it very closely resembles globulin in its chemical relations, only it is loss soluble in acids and alkalies, and less energetic in all its re-actions. Of course, it exists in blood-plasma, and in the process of coagulation of the blood combines with globulin, transuded from the corpuscles, to form the fibrin of the clot.* Serum.—This is a thin and usually transparent liquid, of a pale yellowish hue ; it is, however, sometimes turbid, or milky, and this turbidity may depend upon difi'erent conditions, but mo.st commonly on excess of fatty molecules. The specific gravity of serum ranges from 1025 to 1030, but is most commonly between 1027 and 1028 (Nasse), and is more constant than that of the blood. The solid contents of the serum are not more than 8 or 9 in 100 parts ; the proportion of water being, for males 90 88, and for females 91'71. It is always more or less alkaline. When heated, it coagulates, in conseqiience of the large quantity of albumen it contains ; and after separation of the albumen, a thin saline liquid remains, some- times named serosity. The following ingredients are found in the serum :— Albumen.—This principle is considered to be combined with soda as au albuminate ; its quantity may be determined by precipitating it in the solid form by means of heat or alcohol, washing with distilled water, drying, and weighing the mass. Its proportion is about 80 in 1000 of serum, or nearly 40 in 1000 of blood. Globulin.—When serum is diluted with about ten times its bulk of distilled water, and subjected to a stream of carbonic acid, the liquid becomes turbid, and globulin is precipitated. It may also be obtained from the diluted serum by the cautious addition of acetic acid, but the least isfti ?iq'-o ' '° ^eicherfc & Du Bois Reymond's Archiv. fur An at. u. Physiol., I8t)l and 1802. For a lucid account of the progress and present state of this question, lounUed on a confirmatory repetition of Buchanan's and of Schmidt's fundamental experi- ments, see an article on the Coaguktion of the Blood, [by Dr. Michael Foster,] in the JNatural History Eeview for 1864, p. 157.