Report on the state of the blood and the blood-vessels in inflammation, and on other points relating to the circulation in the extreme vessels : together with a report on lymphatic hearts and on the propulsion of lymph from them, through a proper duct into their respective veins / by T. Wharton Jones.

Thomas Wharton Jones

Date:: 1891

Credit: Report on the state of the blood and the blood-vessels in inflammation, and on other points relating to the circulation in the extreme vessels : together with a report on lymphatic hearts and on the propulsion of lymph from them, through a proper duct into their respective veins / by T. Wharton Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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serum—the fibrin, as a colloid, undergoing pectization or coagulation; while the serum, being a crystalloid solution, is pressed out in a fluid state by the increasing contraction of the coagulating fibrin. In the fluid serum thus become free, the rouleaux of red corpuscles are left immersed. Super- vening on this, the arrangement in rouleaux tends to be broken up. § 18. These phenomena may be taken to indicate that the presence of the fibrinous element in the fluid state is a condition favourable to the aggregation of the red corpuscles into rouleaux; while, on the other hand, immersion in the serum, which is a crystalloid saline solution in an albuminous colloid, set free when the colloid fibrin has been separated by pectization or coagulation, is unfavourable to the conti- nuance of the said aggregation.* § 19. Conversely, it is here, in passing, worthy of being noted that, as we have above seen, and as we shall again see more particularly below, on the establishment of vascular congestion, as seen in the web of the frog's foot under micro- scopical examination, the red corpuscles and the fibrinous element of the plasma being left together in direct contact by the dialytic exudation of the crystalloid saline of the serum which takes place, become, owing to their nature as colloids, interfused and form the uniform viscous-looking red mass within the vessels of the affected part which is seen moving sluggishly along, and at last becoming stagnant, as above described in the quotation from Sir Charles Hastings, and which was spoken of by older writers under the expres- sion of lentor and rcmora of the blood. § 20. But to return to the behaviour of our drop of blood, which was withdrawn from the living body. After the pre- * In No. xxvni. of the ' British and Foreign Medical Review (July, 1842), the fact was stated that aggregation of the red corpuscles of blood into rouleaux does still take place in the serum after the fibrin of the plasma has been withdrawn by coagulation. It was, however, shown I hat the inference that the fibrin exerts no essential action in causing the aggregation must be taken with some degree of qualification.

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