Microscopical morphology of the animal body in health and disease / by C. Heitzmann. With 380 original engravings.

Carl Heitzmann

Date:: 1883

Credit: Microscopical morphology of the animal body in health and disease / by C. Heitzmann. With 380 original engravings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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$srnrcrrRi-: of cojjjjikj) lii.ooD-coiwrscLKs. \)i The rc^niliir rosette, stellated, and th<)i-ii-ai»i>le sliai)es are euused ])V a unifonii ('(Hieeiitric eontraetioii <»t the livin<; matter; —the fiiiid in the interior, bein^ pressed toward the outer layer between the points of attaehnient of the threads, will prodnee a biilfiriii^r oiit at the })erii)herv. Irre^idar conti-actions of the livinj; matter will <i:ive rise to irrej^ular flaps at the periphery. An indentation is due to loeally limited eontraetion of the net-work in the interior of the eorpusele. Contraction of the living matter at one part of tlie ])eriphery will l)rin<j: about a protrusion of a flap at another, the fiaj) ])ein<i: bounded by the outer layer of the corpuscle. Se<;mental contraction of the net-work will pj-oduce a rupture of the outer layer of the corpuscle, with i)rojection of a pedun- culated granule or knob, formerly a part of the interior net-work. Continued contraction will be followed by the rupture of the pedicle and the production of either so-called detritus or small gri'anules, or when the protruded knob is larger, or has become swelled, of a pa]e-gra_\dsh disk.* Lastly, a large amount of the net-work having been separated from the parent body, the latter becomes transformed into a pale disk, in which no traces of a net-work, or but very indistinct ones, are visible, a so-called ghost. At every stage of the protrusion of either flaps or pedunculated knobs or gi-anules, the living matter may be overtaken by death, and the contraction become fixed by cadaveric rigidity. It may perhaps be worth while to notice that irregular contractions have a somewhat greater tendency to such permanency than regular ones; these more frequently \nelding, by relaxation of the net- work, or reestablishment of the state of rest, at impending death. But in the blood-corpuscles kept for over two years in bichromate of potash, all the described forms can be observed just as well as in freshly made specimens. * The peculiar coi-puseles believed to be characteristic of sj^philis by Los- torfer, and proved by Strieker to be present in the blood of individuals broken down by that and various other diseases, are nothing but such disks—/. e., portions of the colored blood-corpuscles protruded fi-om the interior, detached and more or less swelled. As persons in low states of healtli have a relatively small amount of living matter in the same bulk, or, in other words, only a delicate net-work within thebioplasson body orplastid(the so-called cell), such a net-work suspended in a relatively large amoimt of fluid can much more easily contract and bring about a rupture of the outer layer, than in the case of healthy persons, within whose plastids there is relatively less room for contraction to take place. 7$