The leucocyte in health and disease : being an enquiry into certain phases of leucocytic activity / by C.J. Bond.

  • Charles John Bond
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The leucocyte in health and disease : being an enquiry into certain phases of leucocytic activity / by C.J. Bond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Often the larger or club-shaped end of such an actively moving and elongated cell will throw out a beard or fringe of fine fibrils or streamers, the sides of the rod¬ shaped mass remaining comparatively smooth. Observation under dark ground illumination also shows that cells during pseudopodesis, not only throw out bulky processes by means of which the movements of the cell as a whole are affected, but also numbers of finer fibrils resembling antennae, which act as feelers, and serve also to entangle foreign bodies. The Relation between the Physical Changes which Accom¬ pany Changes in Shape and the Chemical Changes which occur in the Cell. The leucocyte, when observed in freshly shed blood- plasma, is a colourless cell, circular in outline, and nearly globular in form. It is filled with highly refractive colourless granules. It has the appearance of an inactive quiescent body, passively transported by the currents in the medium. Its inactivity is the expression of a state of chemical equilibrium between the cell and the fluid in which it floats. In a drop of saliva (and occasionally) in a drop of blood taken direct from the finger and ex¬ amined on a slide in normal saline leucocytes may be seen in which the cell granules appear to be in active movement, oscillating rapidly within the cell. This vibratory condition would seem to be a stage preliminary to the commencement of pseudopodial activity and move¬ ment, and to be associated with commencing chemical activity within the cell. The protrusion of pseudopods and fine fibrils mav thus be associated with a chemical interaction between the cell and the surrounding medium.