A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by the late John Hunter.

  • Hunter, John, 1728-1793.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by the late John Hunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    49/532
    indicate more inflammation, while the next quantity taken sus- pends its red parts in the lymph, and gives the idea that the first small quantity had been of such service'at the time of its flowing, as to have altered for the better the whole mass of blood. Rest therefore may be regarded as one of the immediate causes of the separation. III. Of the Serum. The serum is the second part of which the whole mass of blood appears to be composed ; or is one of those substances into which the blood spontaneously separates itself. So far it appears as a simple fluid, in which light 1 shall consider it; though we shall find hereafter that it is composed of two sub- stances, which, in many of our experiments, separate. Serum, I believe, is common to the blood of all animals; but there is more of it, I think, in those animals which have red blood : perhaps it may bear some proportion to the quantity of red particles in the blood, and may be of use to dilute it. The serum is lighter than the other parts of the blood, and therefore swims above them when separated. It is commonly separated from the coagulating lymph when that fluid coagu- lates ; and is, therefore, almost always found when the blood is taken out of the blood-vessels, and kept together in a conside- rable mass. When the lymph coagulates strongly, we com- monly find more serum, because it is then spueezed out more forcibly than when the coagulation is formed loosely; it is not, however, necessary for the lymph to coagulate, in order to separate the serum, for we find that it separates in disease, as in the dropsy. It is separated also from the mass of blood in uterine gestation, being the fluid in which the foetus is immersed or swims. I have seen it separate from the remaining mass before the coagulation of the lymph. I observed once in the blood of a lady, that a separation between the two fluids almost immedi- ately took place, the serous part swimming on the top, while the lymph remained still fluid. From this appearance I had pronounced that there would be a great deal of buff, supposing that the transparent fluid at the top was coagulating lymph ; but I was mistaken ; for when the lymph was coagulated, there was no buff, and the transparent fluid remaining at top, proved to be the serum. In this there could be no deception, as there was no buff, or size ; for if there had been size at the top of the coagulum, it C