Corpuscle

“ Though the relative proportions of the leucocytes are probably continually undergoing change even in health, especially as the result of taking food, the number of red corpuscles remains much more constant. Through the agency of some unknown mechanism, the supply of fresh red corpuscles from the bone-marrow keeps pace with the destruction of effete corpuscles, and in health each corpuscle contains a definite and constant amount of haemoglobin. ”

“ It suffices that the white corpuscles or leucocytes, retaining the primitive amœboid character, exhibit individual activities: send out prolongations like pseudopodia, take in organic particles as food, and are independently locomotive. Though far less numerous than the red corpuscles, yet, as ten thousand are contained in a cubic millimetre of blood—a mass less than a pin's head—it results that the human body is pervaded throughout all its blood-vessels by billions of these separately living units. ”

“ It has the power of uniting very readily with oxygen whenever that gas is abundant, and, after having absorbed it, of giving it up to the surrounding media, when oxygen is there present in smaller amounts than in the corpuscle. This function of carrying oxygen is the most important function of the red corpuscle, although the red corpuscle also removes part of the carbon dioxide from the tissues on their return to the lungs. The taking up of oxygen is accompanied by a change in color of the mass of corpuscles from a dull red to a bright scarlet. ”

“ The corpuscles are very flexible and can squeeze through small apertures, as in the tiny capillaries, and regain their shape. They are probably formed chiefly in the red bone marrow at the ends of the bones, which under the microscope shows red corpuscles in various stages of growth, and also in the spleen, for which no other use is known. Their function is to carry oxygen, which forms a chemical combination, though an extremely loose one, with the hemoglobin. As the tissues are more greedy of oxygen than is the hemoglobin, they rob the corpuscles of it. ”

“ The white corpuscles are in reality embryonic structures, concerned chiefly in the production of other forms, such as red corpuscles, and it may be under certain conditions various elements of the other tissues. The red corpuscles have a definite respiratory function. But these form a part only of the blood. The largest portion of the blood, the whole mass of the plasma, is an unorganized fluid with no proper physiological (vital) properties of its own. Its function is to serve as the great medium of exchange between all the tissues of the body. ”

“ Among the inferior organisms, all do not resolve themselves into those corpuscle-germs which I was the first to point out as one of the forms of their possible development. Many infectious microbes do not resolve themselves, in their cultures, into corpuscle germs. ”

“ It is an interesting fact that both the number of colorless corpuscles in the body and the vigor with which each colorless corpuscle attacks foreign organisms vary from time to time, so that we are much more secure against infection at some times than at others. ”

“ The next changes to be noticed take place in the nuclei which were not converted into blood-corpuscles, but which were to be seen in the protoplasm surrounding the corpuscles. They become more numerous and smaller, and, uniting with the protoplasm in which they were imbedded, become converted into flat cells (spindle-shaped in section) , and in a short time form an entire investment for the masses of blood-corpuscles. The same change also occurs in the protoplasmic processes which connect the masses of corpuscles. ”

“ From the sensory corpuscle, which is a small mass of protoplasm provided with branches connecting it to neighboring corpuscles, the nerve-energy, if adequate, passes along a junction thread of protoplasm to a much larger corpuscle, which is called a motor corpuscle, and the energy of which, when liberated by the nerve impulse from the sensory corpuscle, is capable of exciting muscles into active contraction. ”

“ The white blood corpuscles are larger in size; they possess the power of changing form and creeping. They gather particles of foreign substance, and creep with them out of the blood vessels, and even to the surface of the body. They also feed upon bacteria, and help to rid the body of harmful kinds. The white blood corpuscles are, in a sense, eating cells. They are renewed from the spleen and the lymphatic glands. Physiologists now recognize several kinds of white blood corpuscles. ”

“ The amount of bile pigment eliminated during the day indicates that the destruction must be considerable, and since the number of corpuscles does not vary there must be an equivalent formation of new ones. This takes place in the red bone-marrow, where special cells are provided for their continuous production. In embryonic life their formation is effected in another way. Certain mesodermic cells, resembling those of the connective tissue, collect masses of haemoglobin, and from these elaborate red blood corpuscles which thus come to lie in the fluid part of the cell. ”

“ A growing child should make red corpuscles in his blood at a great rate. All the processes which construct his bones and his flesh and his various organs should be working full-powered. The red rib-marrow of freshly killed young animals contains a substance which is soluble in chemically pure glycerin and can be digested out of that red rib-marrow, and which, if given to the child, greatly increases the proportion of red corpuscles in the blood and stimulates all the constructive processes of the body. ”

“ Chemical Composition.—On destruction the red corpuscles yield two chief proteins, haemoglobin and a nucleo-protein, and a number of other substances similar to those usually obtained on the break-down of any cellular tissue, such for instance as lecithin, cholesterin and inorganic salts. The most important protein is the haemoglobin. To it the corpuscle owes its distinctive property of acting as an oxygen carrier, for it possesses the power of combining chemically with oxygen and of yielding up that same oxygen whenever there is a decrease in the concentration of the oxygen in the solvent. ”

“ During every stage of modification of corpuscles thus described, their function to absorb and fix gases is impaired, and when the aggregation of the cells, in masses, is great, other difficulties arise, for the cells, united together, pass less easily than they should through the minute vessels of the lungs and of the general circulation, and impede the current, by which local injury is produced.
"A further action upon the blood, instituted by alcohol in excess, is upon the fibrine or the plastic colloidal matter. ”

“ These are apt, however, to be small and to contain a subnormal amount of haemoglobin, and it is only after some time that they are destroyed and their place taken by normal corpuscles. If the loss has been very great, nucleated red corpuscles may even be carried into the blood-stream. The blood possesses a great power of recovery, if time be given it, because the organ (bone-marrow) which forms so many of its elements never, in health, works at high pressure. ”

“ On blood corpuscles, see ‘Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science,’ April 1874, p. 185.’ [page 61]
under a high power, is the appearance of the finest granules in the fluid within the cells, making it slightly cloudy. These granules soon aggregate into small globular masses. I have seen a cloud of this kind appear in 10 s. after a drop of a solution of carbonate of ammonia had been given to a gland. With dark red leaves the first visible change often is the conversion of the outer layer of the fluid within the cells into bag-like masses. ”

“ Throughout life, millions of these cells retain their primary characters, and constitute the white corpuscles of blood, "phagocytes," and connective tissue corpuscles; others again, engage in the formation of material round themselves, and lie, in such cases, as gristle and bone, embedded in the substance they have formed; others again, undergo great changes in form and internal structure, and become permanently modified into, for instance, nerve fibres and muscle substance. ”

“ Where there are not sufficient red blood corpuscles, it is of vital importance that one keep up a good circulation; the stomach, intestines, liver, and spleen must be strengthened through exercise and one must breathe deeply of pure air, for the red blood corpuscles are oxygen carriers, and the insufficient supply must do double duty or the waste of the system will not be oxidized and eliminated. ”

“ As the corpuscles grow older and become more rigid, they, as it were, are caught by the amœboid 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 favored by the slowness of the circulation in these organs. ”

“ There are throughout the red marrow living cells which are constantly dividing and subdividing, forming more and more so-called daughter cells. Within these daughter cells hemoglobin is presently deposited; a little later they lose the nucleus and probably the remainder of the living protoplasm as well, leaving just the framework of nonliving protein with its contained store of hemoglobin. This is the finished red corpuscle, and it breaks loose from the red marrow and floats out into the blood stream. The rate of manufacture of red corpuscles is very rapid ”

“ In the blood, while it is circulating briskly in its vessels, there are distributed through it, without contact with each other, the millions of oxygen carriers called blood corpuscles. In the circulation in the free channels of the body, the arteries and veins, it is motion that keeps these corpuscles apart; we draw a drop of blood and let it come to rest on the microscope glass, and as the motion ceases the separated corpuscles run together, and adhere so firmly that we cannot easily separate them without their disintegration. ”

“ Not only those leucocytes which happen to be near to a microbe introduced within the body, do swallow it. It is now certain that as soon as microbes, or even some foreign substance like a splinter or coloring matter, is introduced into the body, the wandering white corpuscles of the body immediately move toward the foreign matter or organism, as if they were endowed with a certain irritability or sensibility, which directs their movements. ”

“ It takes to every cell of the body the protein materials which are necessary for the body's renewal, and also the fuel materials which are to be burned to supply the body's energy; also it takes some thirty million millions of microscopic red corpuscles which are the carriers of oxygen, and an even greater number of the white corpuscles, which are the body's scavengers, its defenders from invasion by outside germs. ”

“ If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions, and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float in it and give it its colour, a comparatively small number of colourless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and very irregular shape. ”

“ The red corpuscles contain the oxygen which goes to combine with the superabundant carbon, and develop heat; the fatty matters probably repair the fatty tissues, and glands that are of a fatty nature; and the various salts contribute to the bones, and to the chemical properties of those secretions which are formed by the glands, &c., while the great proportion of water is employed in cleansing, softening, and cooling the whole, or the living edifice, and it is the medium through which all the nutrition of the body is distributed. ”

“ These membranes are present in all living cells without exception, whether a visible external layer is present or not. Thus red blood corpuscles, though typically naked cells, show by their behavior in salt-solutions of varying concentration that they are bounded by a difficultly permeable surface-layer which is different in its physical properties from the internal protoplasm—having in fact the essential properties of a semi-permeable membrane. ”

“ In the lungs, the corpuscles give up carbonic acid, and absorb a fresh supply of oxygen, while in the general circulation the oxygen disappears in the process of tissue transformation, and is replaced, in the venous blood, by carbonic acid. The nutritive portions of food are converted into a homogeneous fluid, which pervades every part of the body, is the basis of every tissue, and which is termed the blood. ”

“ For they say that those corpuscles, which they call atoms, are of different qualities: that some are moist, and therefore heavy, and tending downwards; others dry and earthy, and therefore still heavy; but others fiery, and therefore always pushing upwards; others cold and inert, and always remaining in the middle. Since then some, as being fiery, always tend upward, and others, as being moist and dry, always downwards, and others keep a middle and unequal course, how could they meet together and form one body? ”