An account of certain organisms occurring in the liquor sanguinis / by William Osler.
- William Osler
- Date:
- 1874
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An account of certain organisms occurring in the liquor sanguinis / by William Osler. 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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![article in which he records the results of a long series of observations on their presence in various acute and chronic diseases. His investigations of the blood of patients, which were much more extensive than any I have been able to undertake, show that, in all exanthems and chronic affections of whatever sort, indeed in almost all cases attended with disturbance of function and debility, these masses are to be found. He concludes that their number is in no proportion to the severity of the disease, and that they are more numerous in the latter stages of an affection, after the acute symptoms have subsided. The former of these propositions is undoubtedly true, as I have rarely found masses larger or more abundant than I, at one time, obtained from my own blood when in a condition of perfect health. These two accounts may be said to com- prise every thing of any importance that has been written concerning these bodies. The following observers refer to them cursorily :—Erb *, in a paper on the development of the red corpuscles, speaks of their presence under both healthy and diseased conditions : he had hoped, in the begin- ning of his research, that they might stand, as Zimmerman supposes (see below), in some connexion with the origin and development of the red corpuscles; but, as he proceeded, the fallacy of this view became evident to him. Bettelheim t seems to refer to these corpuscles when he speaks of finding in the blood of persons, healthy as well as diseased, small punctifonn, or rod-shaped, corpuscles of various sizes. Christol and Kiener J describe in blood small round corpuscles, whose measurements agree with the ones under consideration; and they also speak of their exhibiting slight movements. Biess §, in a criticism bn a work of the next-mentioned author, again refers to these masses, and reiterates his statements concerning them. Birsch-Hirschfeld|| had noticed them and the similarity the corpuscles bore to micrococci, and suggests that under some conditions Bacteria might develop from them. Zimmerman 5] has described corpuscular elements in the blood, which, Math reference to the bodies in question, demand a notice here. He let blood flow directly into a solution of a neutral salt, and, after the subsidence of the coloured elements, examined the supernatant serum, in which he found, in extra- ordinary numbers, small, round, colourless corpuscles with weak contours, to which he gave the name of “ elementary corpuscles.” These he met with in human blood both in health and disease and in the blood of the lower animals; and he found gradations between the smaller (always colour- less) forms and full-sized red corpuscles. He gives measurements (for the smaller ones, from one 1000th to one 800th of a line ; the largest, one * Virchow’s Archiv, Bd. xxxiv. t Wiener med. Presse, 1868, No. 13. t Comptes Rcndus, lxvii. 1054. Quoted in ‘ Centralblatt,’ 1869, p. 96. § Centralblatt, 1873, No. 34. || Centralblatt, 1873, No. 39. *fi Virchow’s Archir. Bd. xvjii.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22435566_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
