118 Deutsches Archiv f. klin. Med., Bd. xxvi.
Cafavy states119 that the colorless corpuscles of leukæmia do not display active amoeboid changes, indicating thereby a diseased and enfeebled condition of protoplasm. I find a note made in Sanderson's laboratory in 1873 on the very sluggish and imperfect movements of the colorless corpuscles in a case of leukæmia in University College Hospital. In Case V. the note on one day is, "Active amoeboid changes," and in two other cases since Cafavy's paper I have seen the protoplasmic movements tolerably active, but not in all equally. Possibly the leucocytes from the marrow do not move so freely as the others; normal marrow-cells have very feeble amoeboid powers. Ehrlich120 has observed that the number of leucocytes in leukæmic blood which contain granules reacting with eosin is very great, whereas in normal blood very few occur.
119 Lancet, ii., 1880.
120 Zeitschrift f. klin. Med., Bd. i.
Nucleated red blood-corpuscles, such as occur in the blood of the foetus and in the red marrow of the adult, have been found in leukæmic blood by Klebs, Mosler, and others. I have observed them in four cases. They are scanty, usually isolated, rarely more than one or two in a field; often, indeed, many fields must be searched before finding one. On two occasions (Case IX.) they might be called numerous—three or four in each field of the No. 9 immersion lens.
Schultze's granule-masses, the aggregations of the discoid hæmatoblasts, are present in variable numbers, sometimes very numerous. I have examined slides in which they were absent. A curious mistake was made by a writer in the Lancet (1878, ii.) when he described these as a hitherto unnoticed feature of the blood in leukæmia.
The fibrin network which separates between the corpuscles is usually very thick and dense.
Peculiar crystals, elongated octahedra or spindles, of variable size and bright-white appearance, separate very commonly on a slide of leukæmic blood, particularly if kept surrounded with oil or paraffin for twenty-four hours. They are known as Charcot's crystals, and are identical with those which occur in the bone-marrow, in semen, and in sputum in some cases of bronchitic asthma. White of Boston described them well in 1859,121 and believed they were produced by the separation of a neutral principle which he named leukosin. I can confirm Zenker's observation,122 that they form sometimes in the colorless cells.
121 Boston Medical and Surg. Journal.
122 Deutsches Archiv f. klin. Med., xviii.