Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...demonstrate them, do actually produce as artefacts enormous numbers of bodies, which are certainly the bodies enumerated in blood-counts and described as morphological constituents of that fluid. Thus, speaking of the action of 33 per cent. potash, some observers have stated that in this fluid "the platelets are better preserved... but of no use, because of its destructive effect upon the red cell." 1 Metchnikoff and Hirdy noticed these explosive cells, which disintegrate within a few seconds owing to contact with glass. The products of the explosion appear to cause the discharge of other cells in their vicinity. I hold the view that platelets do not exist in normal human blood, and the evidence which I will now give is in my opinion absolutely conclusive on this point. I may say this view is the exactly opposite one to that which I held for a long time, both before and after I began to work at the subject. Indeed, blood inside the body, and blood injured by contact with any surface which is wetted by it, are two absolutely different things. Blood alters with great slowness if received under oil into a vessel coated with vaseline, and the plasma which collects above the sediment of corpuscles may be stirred freely without injury, with an oiled glass rod. This experiment made by Freund in 1886 was subsequently confirmed by Haycraft, and this, together with many of the devices contrived by Lowit for his study on the origin of platelets, so as to avoid contact of the blood with glass, I have repeated. But as neither oils nor odourless paraffin are indifferent fluids for blood, I use a method suggested by Neumann, in which the blood lies between two cover-glasses, one of which is half the diameter of the other. The lower disc hangs...
