Addison and the white corpuscles : an aspect of nineteenth-century biology / L. J. Rather.

  • Rather, L. J.
Date:
1972 [i.e. 1971]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Addison and the white corpuscles : an aspect of nineteenth-century biology / L. J. Rather. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that it is Addison's hypotheses rather than his facts that he cannot accept. As for the 'facts', most of them have al ready been put forward by other microscopists. But he is quite unwilling to agree that Addison has established the identity of lymph and pus corpuscles, and of exudation and epithelial cells, with the colourless cells of the circulating blood. Furthermore, Addison's experiment with acetic acid and liquor potassae prove only that the interior of some or all of these cells yields under such treatment a plastic sub stance of some kind; they definitely do not prove, as Addison claims, that all of the plastic matter of blood is enclosed within them. 20 The cornerstone of Addison's theory of secretion, nutrition and inflammation rests on the thesis of the identity of these cells, adds the reviewer, yet surely the similarities of appearance do not allow us to assert similarity of character. Addison might find the same appearance, in cluding the responses to acetic acid and liquor -potassae , in cells as different in character as those of an oyster and a man. 21 As for Addison's statement that a gradual transition between the colourless blood corpuscles within the blood vessels and the lymph and pus globules outside of them can be observed, this merely asserts what is to be proved. 22 The reviewer then closes with a sketch of his own ideas as to the relation between the nutritive process and its abnormal variant the inflammatory process. 23 Addison was much more roughly handled in the same year by a writer in the hancet. 2it After first remarking that to keep fact and hypothesis separate in the practice of micro scopy was of the utmost importance for the advancement of science, and that modern achromatic lenses had made this possible, the reviewer went on to say that only when strictly inductive Baconian procedures were carried on by micro scopists well acquainted with the current state of knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology could success in this field be achieved. Mr. Addison had signally failed. His 'facts' were of two kinds, long known or doubtful. His theories (presented intermingled inextricably with his facts) were such as to be quite irreconcilable with the chemical