Volume 1

A textbook of human physiology / / translated from [the] 7th German edition by William Stirling.

  • Landois, Leonard
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A textbook of human physiology / / translated from [the] 7th German edition by William Stirling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    55/602 (page 15)
    That the normal rod blood-corpuscles and other particles suspended in the blood-stream are not taken up in this way, may be due to their being smooth and polished. As the corpuscles grow older and become more rigid, they, as it were are caught by the amoeboid cells. As cells containing blood-corpuscles are very rarely found in the general circulation, one may assume that the occurrence of these cells within the spleen, liver, and marrow of bone is favoured by the slowness of the circulation in these organs (Quincke). Pathological.—In certain pathological conditions, ferruginous substances derived from the red blood-corpuscles are found in masses in the spleen, the marrow of bone, and the capillaries of the liver:—(1) When the disintegration of blood-corpuscles is increased, as in anaemia (Stahel). (2) When the formation of red blood-corpuscles from the old material is diminished. If the excretion from the liver cells be prevented, iron accumulates within them ; it is also more abundant in the blood-serum, and it may even accumulate in the secretory cells of the cortex of the kidney and pancreas, in gland cells, and in the tissue elements of other organs. When the amount of blood in dogs is greatly increased, after four weeks an enormous number of granules containing iron occur iii the leucocytes of the liver capillaries, the cells of the spleen, bone-marrow, lymph-glands, liver cells, and the epithelium of the cortex of the kidney. The iron reaction in the last two situations occurs after the introduction of haemoglobin, or of salts of iron into the blood (Glacvcck, v. Stark.) In thrombi and in extravasations of blood into the neighbourhood of living tissues, there is formed besides hfematoidin, the body hsematosiderin. When we reflect Low rapidly large quantities of blood are replaced after haemorrhage-and after menstruation, it is evident that there must be a brisk manu- factory somewhere. As to the number of corpuscles which daily decay, we have in some measure an index in the amount of bile-pigment and urine-pigment resulting from the transformation of the liberated haemoglobin (§ 20). 9. II. COLOURLESS CORPUSCLES, BLOOD-PLATES, AND GRANULES. — White Blood-Corpuscles.—Blood, like many other tissues, contains a number of A C cells or corpuscles which reach it from without; the corpuscles van somewhat in form, and are called colourless or white blood-cor- puscles or leucocytes (S<ewson, 1770). Similar corpuscles are found in lymph, adenoid tissue, marrow of bone, and as wander- ing cells or leucocytes in con- nective-tissue, and also between glandular and epithelial cells [so that their ubiquity is a marked feature, thus differing from the coloured corpuscles which nor- mally remain within the blood- vessels]. So that these corpuscles are by no means peculiar to blood alone. They all consist of more or less spherical masses of proto- plasm, which is sticky, highly retractile, soft, capable of move- ment, and devoid of an envelope (fig. 14). When they are quite fresh (A) it is difficult to detect the nucleus, but after they have been shed for some time, or after & Fig. 14. A, human white blood-corpuscles, without any reagent ; B, after the action of water; C, after acetic°acid; D, frog's corpuscles, changes of shape due to amoe- boid movement; E, fibrils of fibrin from coagulated blood ; F, elementary granules. the addition of water (B) or acetic acid, the nucleus (which is usually a compound one) appears; acetic acid clears up the perinuclear protoplasm, and reveals the P>-sence of the nuclei, of which the number varies from one to four, although generally three are found. The subsequent addition of magenta solution nuclei to stain deeply. Water makes the contents the 6* causes more turbid, and