On a new constituent of the blood and its physiological import / by L.C. Wooldridge ; communicated by M. Foster.

  • Wooldridge, Leonard Charles, 1857-1889.
Date:
1885
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On a new constituent of the blood and its physiological import / by L.C. Wooldridge ; communicated by M. Foster. 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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    lli'rom the Proceedings of the Royal Society, No. 235, 1885.] On a New Constituent of the Blood and its Physiological ImpSnr.- By L. C. WOOLDRIDGE, D.Sc, M.B., Demonstrator of Physiology in Guy's Hospital. Communicated by Pro- fessor M. Foster, Sec. R.S. Received December 16, 1884. Tn a paper on the Origin of the Fibrin Ferment, published in Proc. Roy. Soc, vol. 36, I showed that there exists, dissolved in the plasma, a body which can give rise to fibrin ferment. I have proceeded with my investigations, and have sncceeded in making some additions to our knowledge of this subject, which I here describe. As my researches are not complete, I confine myself to as brief an account as possible. The subject is best studied in the blood of peptonised dogs. But as I showed in the above quoted paper, similar results are obtained from normal salt plasma, so that the results are not peculiar to pepton blood. The body, the presence of which gives rise to fibrin ferment, can be isolated from pepton plasma in the following very simple manner:—The plasma having been completely freed from all corpuscular elements by means of the centrifuge, is cooled down to about 0°. The plasma, which was previously perfectly clear, becomes rapidly turbid, and after standing for some time in the cool, a very decided flocculent precipitate forms. 1 have already described this observation in a short note, Ueber einen neuen StofF des Blut- Plasmas, in du Bois Reymond's Archiv fiir Physiologic, but it is necessary for me to allude to it here. 1^0w it is this body which gives rise to the fibrin ferment. So long as the former is present in considerable quantity the latter clots readily on passing through it a stream of carbonic acid, or on dilution, and at the same time a very considerable quantity of fibrin ferment makes its appearance. By prolonged cooling the greater part of this substance can be removed, and with its gradual removal the plasma clots less and less readily with COg, and less and less ferment is formed, till finally it becomes practically incoagulable, i.e.y forms only a faint trace of fibrin after several days. If some of the substance be again added to the plasma, it regains its power of clotting with COg. (The substance must be added before it has stood very long: see under.)