Note on the state in which fibrin exists in the blood / by Andrew Anderson.

  • Anderson, Andrew, 1818-1870.
Date:
[1844]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Note on the state in which fibrin exists in the blood / by Andrew Anderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    that it is in part to an albuminous, and not, as Prout and Christison* supposed, wholly to a fattj matter that such serum owes its opacity; and by the microscope it can be seen to swarm with particles resem- bling the molecules of the blood, rather than with the chyle globules which Gulliver describes,! though no doubt these may in certain cases exist. Dr. Andrew Buchanan J has discovered a method of separating this albuminous matter, and causing it to float on the sur- face of the fluid, when it puts on all the appearance of the amorphous substance found in what Hodgkin § calls the nonplastic serous effu- sion. Do such effusions depend on the superabundance of this matter in the blood, as the more plastic forms are owing to increase in the coagulable fibrin, and is the well known action of mercury in making the plastic become the aplastic effusion, owing to some re- ducing action by which it tends to make the protein compounds of the blood less fibrinous, and more like common albumen ? It is evident that in the blood we have several forms of these com- pounds, deserving of much separate investigation, as :— 1. Albumen—coagulable by heating the serum. 2. Serolin remaining in the solution, mixed with urea, salts, &c. —and which Mulder, with what truth I know not, avers || to be a trit- oxide of protein. 3. Fibrin—procured by agitating fresh blood. 4. White molecules—procurable by Dr. Buchanan's method from milky serum. 5. White corpuscles—probably procurable by a like method from the yet fluid buffy coat. 6. Hematosin dissolved out by water from the red globules. 7. Globulin, or the coats and nuclei of these globules, which sub - side to the bottom when hematosin remains dissolved. All these substances must be separately analysed, if we would per- fect our knowledge of the blood: but it were an error to fancy that they must needs be exactly the same in all cases—even if in the same way procured. Mulder** tells us that the buffy coat is not pure fibrin, but a mixture of the deutoxide and tritoxide of protein : I cannot tell how this may be ; but I know that it is not in the globules alone that we find a varying attractive or cohesive power. In in- flammation, as Jones has shown,tt the mutual attraction of the red corpuscles is increased, so that they withdraw from the floating plasma ; but the solidifying fibrin of that plasma contracts too with a * On Granular Degen. of the Kidney, t Notes to Gerbcr's Anat. J Proceedings of Glas. Phil. Soc. 1844. § On Serous Membranes. |1 Annalcn der Ch. und Ph. 1843. ** Loo. cit. ft Loc. cit.