ment or not. The evidence rather indicates that the particles in the fine vacuoles are produced within the cells and not ingested. But that the particles are related to the granules of the coarsely granular cell there is no evidence to show. In cat's blood, where the true a-granule is cylindroid, the small round particles appearing in the leucocytes in vitro are not cylindroid nor are they so highly refracting; besides, they are much smaller, and their fineness leaves me in doubt over the phosphorus and oxyphil reactions of them. If substances produced at the seat of local injury and inflammation leak into the circulation and there irritate the coarsely granular cell and produce lysis of its granules, some imitation of the process might be expected from the following experiment. Blood from which, when it circulated, the coarsely granular leucocytes were disappearing at an estimated rate of more than half a million per minute, was drawn and centrifuged, and the plasma obtained from it was added to normal blood containing plenty of coarsely granular cells. The coarsely granular cells 6, 12 and 24 hours afterwards, did not seem appreciably altered in number. In one instance two particular individuals of the cell were observed at intervals for 32 hours, sketched, and their granules counted; no change in size or number of their granules occurred. I feel justified in believing, therefore, that the disappearance of the coarsely granular cell in inflammatory blood does not go on in such blood when placed in vitro. Some observers hold that the various forms of hæmic leucocytes are not distinct species or varieties, but that they merely present the various aspects of one pleomorphic organism. If all kinds of hæmic leucocyte are thus transitionally related, it is possible that the coarsely granular cell can become actually one of the other hæmic cells. Unless this transition is wont to be effected very suddenly, the arguments I have adduced against, in the present instance, the disappearance of the cell from the circulation being due to lysis of its granules, apply for the most part against explanation by the pleomorphism hypothesis also. An explanation that may be suggested is that chemical substances generated at the locus læsionis act on the blood just as Löwit* believes albumoses, &c. act when injected intra venam, i.e., altogether destroy and dissolve certain of the leucocytes. The substances produced in the particular inflammations studied might destroy especially the coarsely granular forms. Does the coarsely granular form of leucocyte suffer even more severely than the finely granular when albumoses are injected intravenously? To test this I observed the leucocytes in samples of carotid blood drawn 3-6 minutes after injection of 2 grammes of hemialbumose (Grübler) (5 per cent. in 0.7 per cent. * Op. cit. aqueous NaCl solution) into the jugular vein of a small dog weighing 6 kilos. The countings showed the diminution of leucocytes to fall, as Löwit describes, chiefly on the polynuclear (granular) leucocytes, but the ratio of coarsely granular to finely granular forms did not appear indubitably altered. Ehrlich suggested that the hæmic leucocytes which contain his a-granulation (the "coarsely granular" of this Note) are derived from the oxyphil cells of bone-marrow. In one form of leucocythemia the blood seems certainly to be laden with the oxyphil marrow cells. But the coarsely granular cell of the blood is not exactly an oxyphil marrow cell, for the latter is, as Riedert and Muirt have pointed out, not an amoeboid cell. That the granulation is in both the cells oxyphil does not establish the identity of the cells, nor even of the granulation; a variety of substances are of the eosinophilous class. Dékhuysen§ failed to find any connexion between the hæmic leucocytes with a-granulation and the oxyphil granular plasma cells and connective tissue corpuscles. Yet Ehrlich's view is supported by several facts. Thus I find the oxyphil granules of the marrow yield the Lilienfeld-Monti reaction to the same extent as the coarse granules of the hæmic cell. There is, too, correspondence between the shape of the granules in the cells from both sources; thus I find In the dog and rabbit, small spheroid granules in the coarsely granular leucocyte and in the oxyphil marrow cells. In the horse, huge granules, spheroid, occasionally almost cuboid in the coarsely granular leucocyte and in the oxyphil marrow cells. In the cat, cylindroid granules in the coarsely granular leucocyte and in the oxyphil marrow cell. But I have not been able to satisfy myself in my experiments that the oxyphil cells of the marrow are affected even when Ehrlich's a-granulation practically disappears from the blood. As the coarsely granular leucocyte is not destroyed, or altered so as to escape preparation or recognition, it must be withdrawn from the general circulation, either by becoming fixed in some particular vascular region or by passing out of the blood vessels altogether. I have not yet sufficiently examined the anatomical character of the exudations to criticise these possibilities. The cellular characters of the exudation have seemed to vary greatly; sometimes many cells closely resembled the coarsely granular hæmic leucocyte, but sometimes only a few. Op. cit. + Op. cit. 'Journ. Path. and Bact.,' vol. 1, p. 133, 1892. § 'Verhandl. der Anat. Gesellschaft,' 1892. 'Anat. Anzeiger.' The duration of the period of extreme poverty of the blood in this cell has varied in my observations between 18 hours and 6 days. In prolonged inflammation they may probably be scanty for much longer periods. The degree of numerical elimination of the cell is illustrated by the following reckoning. In one experiment the cells fell from 13 per cent. of all leucocytes to less than 1 per 100 in the course of 12 hours. The animal was a large cat. Steinberg estimates the blood in the cat at 9 per cent. of the body weight; the animal weighed a little over 4 kilo. This would give 360 c.c. blood. In each mm. of blood there were at beginning of experiment about 15,300 leucocytes or 1,200 of the coarsely granular kind, making a total of 432 millions of the coarsely granulate in the circulation. Nine hours later no coarsely granular were found in the specimens examined on either of the two Thoma-Zeiss counters, nor were any found in several coverglass preparations, but in specimens of blood centrifuged two of the cells were found in films of leucocytes from the leucocytic layer. In counting at random through these films 10,000 leucocytes were met with without meeting one coarsely granular cell. Allowing, however, that one existed for every 12,000 of the leucocytes, and knowing that the number of leucocytes had then risen to 36,100 per mm. of blood, the number of coarsely granular leucocytes in the circulation may be estimated at 1,080,000. On this calculation more than 400 millions of them had been withdrawn from the circulating blood in the course of nine hours. In the above example no allowance is made for the diminution in volume of the total blood (the specific gravity had increased from 1·056 to 1·061) which must have occurred but cannot have amounted to many c.c. The example is an extreme one, because the original percentage of these cells in the blood was high. But it gives an idea of the degree of impoverishment of the blood in these cells, and of the rate of their withdrawal (average rate of more than half a million per minute) from the general circulation. I detect at present no clear relation between the diminution of the number of coarsely granular leucocytes and the apoplasmia of the blood. When the apoplasmia developed late (ligation experiments) the withdrawal of coarsely granular leucocytes seemed hardly deferred. In the three experiments on the lung and pleural cavity apoplasmia was not produced, but the numerical reduction of the coarsely granular cells, though not so marked as usual, was unmistakable. Under certain conditions, other than the above experimental ones, I have found the blood to contain very few coarsely granular leucocytes. I have already noted that fasting does not appear to decrease the number of them, but appears rather to increase it. At the same time, if prolonged to starvation point, fasting certainly appears to greatly reduce the number of these cells. I judge so from their practical absence from the blood of three animals admitted into the Brown Institute in a destitute and starving state. Two of these animals did not recover, and autopsy revealed nothing but evidence of starvation, and slighter cases of the kind are not infrequently admitted at the Institution. I have also found the cell abnormally scarce in the blood at a late stage after thyroidectomy. The cell was scarce in the blood of a bitch which had thrown puppies twenty-four hours previously, though her temperature was normal. In a dog with a large subcutaneous abscess and in a horse with submaxillary abscess, I had great difficulty in finding any coarsely granular leucocytes, but the last two examples come under the same category as my own experiments, except that the local inflammatory conditions were subacute. Canon has concluded that the number of eosinophilous cells in the blood is increased in all diseases of skin. In a dog admitted with a severe scald of the back I found the blood almost destitute of these cells (coarsely granular), and it remained so for the first four days after admission. In the experiments in which skin was involved. in the lesion (Series I) the diminution of the cells was as marked as in experiments where skin was not involved. Felsent noticed in three cases of croupous pneumonia that at the height of the "fever" eosinophilous cells seemed absent from the blood. Noorden, on the other hand, has seen a great increase in the number of eosinophilous cells in bronchial asthma at the time of the attack. Hanking has made an interesting observation that the blood clots rapidly when the coarsely granular cell is scanty in the blood. I have pointed out that the coarsely granular cell does not initiate clotting in dog's blood. In the present experiments the blood, at a time when almost (perhaps actually) free from coarsely granular leucocytes, clotted very speedily and firmly, as is well known for blood in inflam mation. DESCRIPTION OF PLATE 1. I wish here to thank very heartily Mr. A. F. S. Kent, to whose skill is due the success of the photomicrograms appended in illustration of some points described in the text. FIG. 1.-"Coarsely granular" hæmic leucocyte of cat. Photographed while living. × 1000. The usual horseshoe shaped nucleus and the cylindroid granules are obvious. Zeiss apochromatic 2 mm. FIGS. 2 and 3.—" Finely granular" hæmic leucocytes (cat), incubated for twentyfour hours at 30° C, and beginning to undergo "vacuolation." In most of the vacuoles no particles are visible. Photographed while living. × 1000. FIG. 4.-Two incubated leucocytes. In each the outline of the cell body is just visible; the nucleus, darkly stained with methylene blue, has been made to smear; before incubation the nuclei of the leucocytes would not smear. FIG. 5.-" Finely granular" hæmic leucocyte (dog), killed very slowly (5° C, ten days). The nucleus has become spheroidal and excentric in position. When fresh the granules of the cell-body were exhibiting Brownian movement. Osmic vapour, then Ehrlich's logwood. × 1000. FIGS. 6 and 7.-"Finely granular" hæmic leucocytes (dog), showing "rosette " form of nucleus commonly assumed. Blood oxalated and incubated for forty-eight hours. Fixation by drying over osmic vapour. Hæmatoxylin and eosin. × 1000. March 1, 1894. Dr. PERKIN, Vice-President, in the Chair. A List of the Presents received was laid on the table, and thanks ordered for them. In pursuance of the Statutes, the names of the Candidates for election into the Society were read, as follows: Bateman, Sir Frederic, M.D. Boulenger, George Albert. Bourne, Professor Alfred Gibbs, Bovey, Henry Taylor, M.A. Clowes, Professor Frank, D.Sc. VOL. LV. : Dibdin, William J., F.C.S. Edgeworth, Professor Francis Etheridge, Robert, F.G.S. Griffiths, Ernest Howard, M.A. Heycock, Charles Thomas, M.A. Jones, Professor John Viriamu, Q |