Leucocytosis in plague and other infections ; and, A method employed in studying the interaction of bacilli and animal fluids 'in vitro' / by R. Row and N.F. Surveyor.

  • Row, R.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Leucocytosis in plague and other infections ; and, A method employed in studying the interaction of bacilli and animal fluids 'in vitro' / by R. Row and N.F. Surveyor. 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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    nol remain motile for more than six to twelve hours; yet, Soon after preparing the slide, the motility, if not quicker than in normal persons, is at least equal to it. The quickening of the motility may probably be due to the irritant action of the toxins on the previously healthy leucocytes. If the disease progresses unfavourably the leucocytic motility gets abolished, and, on the other hand, it becomes re-established as recovery takes place. Besides this alteration of motility certain other phenomena have been observed to take place in the Polymorphic, large Mononuclear and Eosinophile cells. These consist in the formation of vacuoles, sooner or later according to the gravity of the infection. Thus in cases of advanced phthisis the leucocytes are more or less free from granules and are full of vacuoles, even within a few minutes of preparing the slide. In such cases the leucocytes show very feeble motility, and the vacuoles are large in size. On the other hand, in some cases of Plague arid Relapsing fever, during the early part of the disease, the vacuolation is quite peculiar; in fact it is not quite easy to be certain whether to call these round spaces real vacuoles, or to look upon them as some peculiar hyaline degeneration of the protoplasm of the cell. By transmitted light they appear more refractile than the vacuoles seen in phthisis and have a greenish pink border. When the slide is examined soon after its preparation, we find these round globules rolled about in the body of the leucocytes, which are almost twice the size of normal cells and show good ameeboid motility. In some favourable cases we may find the cell undergoing dissolution, and in such cases the real nature of these globules becomes evident, i.e., they are vacuoles, because at this stage these show appearances similar to what one finds in vacuolated dead leucocytes.