A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by John Hunter ; with notes by James F. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    To see how far this is chyle, it would be proper to try the chyle in the same way in serum, &c. After dipping a bit of blotting-paper into the cream, and absorb- 'ng all of it, and also dipping a piece of the same paper into the serum, and drying them, I burnt them both, to see if one burnt more briskly than the other; but there appeared to be no difference. The white part of the white serum sunk in water. § 4. Of the Red Globules. The red part of the blood I choose to consider last, although it has been more the object of attention than the other two, because 1 believe it to be the least important; for it is not a universal in- gredient in the blood of animals, like the coagulating lymph and serum, neither is it to be found in every part of those animals which have it in the general mass of their blood.* The blood, as I have already observed, in those animals we are most acquainted with appears to the naked eye to be a red mass of fluid, having a part which coagulates upon being extravasated. The red part, however, may be washed out of this coagulum, so as to leave it white; and this shows that the blood is not wholly red, but only has a red matter diffused through its other component parts.f * The blood of the insect tribe of every kind is free from any red parts, as is probably that of most animals below them; yet it has been asserted and supposed that their blood contains globules, although not red. I have examined the blood of the silkworm, lobster, &c., and with considerable magnifying powers, but never could discover anything but a uniform transparent mass.* t [The red colouring matter, or haematosine, of the blood in the higher animals is not diffused through the whole mass, as in the class Annelides, but belongs ex- clusively to its globular particles, constituting the external or investing tunic of their fibrinous nuclei. This matter, when separated from the other parts of the blood and dried, is a tasteless, inodorous substance, red by transmitted and dark garnet- coloured by reflected light, very soluble in water, and capable of being preserved a great length of time without undergoing any change from the putrefactive pro- cess. Dissolved in 50 parts of water it begins to coagulate at a temperature of 149°, and is precipitated in the form of insoluble brown flocculi. Prevost and Dumas have attempted to show that the colouring matter is not really dissolved in the water, but exists in a state of extremely minute division; so that though the fragments are sufficiently small to pass through a filter, they are yet plainly discernible through the microscope. I have already observed that haematosine is now gene- rally regarded as a modification of the albuminous principle. According to Ber- zelius it contains about -625 per cent, of iron, in some peculiar state of combina- tion, which may be rendered manifest by the appropriate reagents for this metal, after decolorating the mixture by chlorine gas. The same authority states that 1 [See Professor Grant's Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, as reported in the Lancet, 1833-4, vol. ii., p. 868 et seq., where the existence of globules in the blood of insects is assumed as an indisputable fact. See also Bowerbank in Entom. Mas:-, i. 239, who not only admits their existence, but affirms that they lose their peculiar elliptical form, and acquire the form of those of Mammalia when they are deprived of their external envelopes.]