Note on the formation of fibrine / by Mrs. Ernest Hart.
- Hart, Mrs Ernest, 1848-1931.
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Note on the formation of fibrine / by Mrs. Ernest Hart. 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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![fully from the preparation, this departure of the fibrils of fibrine from the pale corpuscles is, I think, demonstrated. In ^ the well-known and generally aecepted theory of A. Schmidt as to the formation of fibrine, it is assumed that the red corpuscles part with fibrino-plastin before the formation of fibrine can be accomplished. In the course of my research this theory seemed to me to be often capable of physical demonstra- tion by the appearances the red corpuscles sometimes present, for they occasionally appear to be in the act of discharging part of their contents. This appearance is shown in fig. 9, e. The crescentic corpuscles, which are also figured (d., fig. 9), seem to show a loss of substance. They were very frequently found both in human and in rabbit’s blood. Of these crescentic corpuscles I am unable to give any satisfactory explanation. It may be objected that the tails of the colourless and pale corpuscles are produced by currents of the serum. This objec- tion was present to my mind the whole time that these experi- ments were being performed, and great care was taken to ascer- tain if the processes pointed in the direction taken by the fluid. In fig. 5 it will be noted, however, that the tails of the corpuscles point in opposite directions, and their position does not seem to me at all to justify the hypothesis that they may be produced by eddies ; also it will be observed that in fig. 5 both ends of the corpuscles are sending out processes. In fig. 3, moreover, it may be seen that the processes do not take the direction of any possible current, but that they regularly divide and ramify like the branches of a tree. In fig. 10 two pale corpuscles (c) also will be seen sending out branches, which cross and lie over one another; this one fact militates strongly against the explana- tion by currents. Again, it may be objected that the processes sent out by the corpuscles and the bauds and fibres represented in figs. 6 and 7 are not true fibrine. This is, I allow, a weighty objection. As the preparations are all fixed by osinic acid vapour they are, therefore, incapable of being tested by chemical re- agents for fibrine. To eliminate this error I may, however, state that I defibrinated fresh rabbit’s blood and treated the defibrinated blood in the way already described, with the result of finding many pale corpuscles mixed with the red, (the pale corpuscle being, I imagine, the very first step in the formation of fibrine), but extremely few transparent cor- puscles, a few crescents, and no fibrils. I also treated the serum of blood-clot in the same way, and found neither transparent cor- puscles nor fibrils. To be certain, also, that the transp.yent branching corpuscles were not accidental ])roductions, minute drops of serum coagulated on the glass by the action of the osraic](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2234326x_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
