Blood plasma as protoplasma : an extract from the Arris and Gale lectures, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, June, 1886 / by L.C. Wooldridge.

  • Wooldridge, Leonard Charles, 1857-1889.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Blood plasma as protoplasma : an extract from the Arris and Gale lectures, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, June, 1886 / by L.C. Wooldridge. 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.

    21/24 (page 15)
    Let me once more draw attention to the peculiar pre- cipitate produced in the plasma by cold. When once this precipitate is visible, it is very difficult to look on it as other than a form element. Indeed, it has been seen and described as a form element, and it has just the same right to this title as a red corpuscle has. The morphological characters of the precipitate are identical with those of the red corpuscles, and to this must be added the interesting fact that, chemically, the stroma of the red blood corpuscles, that is to say, that part of the red corpuscle which has not become differ- entiated into haemoglobin, is identical with the precipitate produced by cold. Moreover, this latter contains iron in an organic form. Now the development of the red corpuscles is profoundly obscure—overwhelming differences exist between the various authors who have investigated the question, and I put it, in face of what I have found and described above, as a suggestion, are red blood corpuscles deposits from the plasma ? The substance separable by cold may be regarded from two different aspects; on the one hand, the process is evidently allied to crystallization, the discs might be regarded as a crystalline precipitate. On the other hand, they may be looked upon as imperfect cells Omnis cellula e cellula is a dogma. Is it true ? Are blood corpuscles and plasma discs cells, or are they crystals ? Surely, if ever we shall have a border land between vital process and ordinary physical and chemical processes, we shall find it in the blood plasma.