Some reasons for the supposition that the red corpuscles of the blood have cycloidal rotation : (with addenda) / by R.W. Woollcombe.

  • Woollcombe, Robert William.
Date:
[1876]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some reasons for the supposition that the red corpuscles of the blood have cycloidal rotation : (with addenda) / by R.W. Woollcombe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    been previously rotating; it will hence appear that the behaviour of a body during translation is greatly affected by the fact as to whether or not it has also rotation; of course the path of any projectile, (and the red corpuscle especially if it has in addition, as assumed, cycloidal rotation, may for the moment be so viewed), is described by its centre of gravity—whether the red corpuscule has its centre of gravity concentric or excentric in its mass remains to be seen. If it be the symmetrical and homogenous body, as described in Dr. Power’s edition (1876) of Dr. Carpenter’s Physi- ology, it may be presumed to be concentric, and I so believe; but the point is of interest to me, as I have at intervals, since 1854, made experiments with discs as Projectiles, for cycloidal rotation—some not unlike blood discs in form—both concentric and excentric, from model guns ; {vid. papers quoted at end), and though I am bound to say that I could not succeed in making cowcentric discs, fired in a vertical plane, spin cycloidally, (as evidenced by their mode of striking a wooden target), yet ca?cen- tric discs did so uniformly, under certain conditions. However, even from guns, cowcentric discs have been made, so I understand, to spin, by curving the gun slightly in a vertical plane—as done by Colonel Roberto, of the Sardinian Artillery,* the curve being very different in degree to the approximately semi-circular curve of the aortal arch, which seems to me enough to rotate concentric blood discs. If the disputed helicine arteries in erectile tissue do exist—and their existence seems to be supported by great authority, vid. Carpenter, Op. Cit.f—it seems to me that, at all events, a portion of the function of such curve may be assumed to be the giving, by the helicine direction, increased rotation to the red corpuscles ; for I assume such rotation, if it exists, to be then, necessarily, a vital property of the red corpuscle, and likely to add to its already well-established stimulating function upon the nervous and muscular tissues. In the heart and lung, especially, of the viscera, would, in my view, a corpuscle, that is rotating, be more likely than one that * Vide “ Revue de Technologie Militaire,” par L. Delobel, Tome II., 1867, in which volume is also an allusion to my first experiments in 1864, by Captain De Puydt, of the Belgian ArtiUery, who had subsequently con- ceived a similar idea. + Page 366, Note—“ Supported by the great authority of Henle ; though by some other Physiologists denied.