Note on the intracellular development of blood-corpuscles in mammalia / by Edward Albert Schäfer.

  • Sharpey-Schäfer, E. A. (Edward Albert), Sir, 1850-1935.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Note on the intracellular development of blood-corpuscles in mammalia / by Edward Albert Schäfer. 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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    Note on the Intracellular Development of Blood-corpuscles in Mammalia. By Edward Albert Schafer. If the subcutaneous connective tissue of the new-born rat* is exa- mined under the microscope in an indifferent fluid, it is found to consist chiefly of an almost homogeneous hyaline ground-substance, which is traversed by a few wavy fibres, and has a considerable number of exceed- ingly delicate, more or less flattened cells scattered throughout the tissue. The cells here spoken of are of course the connective-tissue corpuscles. They are not much branched as a rule (at any rate their branches do not extend far from the body of the corpuscle), and they are mainly distin- guished by the extraordinary amount of vacuolation which they exhibit— by which is meant the formation within the protoplasm of minute clear spherules, less refractive than that substance, and probably, therefore, spaces in it containing a watery fluid. The nuclei, of which there is generally not more than one in each cell, are frequently obscured by the vacuoles, but, when visible, are seen to be round or oval in shape and beautifully clear and homogeneous; they commonly contain either one or two nucleoli. It is from these cells that the blood-vessels of the tissue are formed, and within them, red, and perhaps also, white blood-cor- puscles become developed. Of the vacuolated cells above described some possess a distinct reddish tinge, either pretty evenly diffused over the whole corpuscle, or in one or more patches, not distinctly circumscribed, but fading off into the sur- rounding protoplasm. Others contain either one, two, or a greater num- ber of reddish globules, consisting apparently of haemoglobin. These vary in size, from minute specks to spherules as large as, or even larger than, the red corpuscles of the adult: in cells which are apparently least deve- loped it is common to find them of various sizes in the same cell; whereas cells which are further advanced in development are not uncommonly crowded with haemoglobin-globules, tolerably equal in point of size, and differing from the adult corpuscle only in shape. It is important to re- mark that there is, at no time, an indication of any structure within the globules resembling a nucleus : the nucleus of the cell also appears, up to this point at least, to undergo no change. In fact the formation of the haemoglobin-globules reminds one rather of a deposit within the cell- substance such as occurs in developing fat-cells, the difference being that in the latter case the deposited globules eventually run together into one * The animal employed was the white rat.