PUS-CORPUSCLES.
4. Pus-corpuscles. We are entitled to consider the pus-corpuscles as cells, by the same arguments which we applied to those of mucus. Vogel, indeed, regards them as identical with those mucus-corpuscles which, according to his view, are morbidly secreted, but which Henle believes to be normal. They are similarly affected by acetic acid, and cannot therefore be young epithelial cells, in which, according to Henle, the splitting of the nucleus does not take place under similar circumstances; indeed, that property appears to be confined entirely to the nuclei of the mucus and pus-corpuscles. Vogel states that the nuclei of pus-corpuscles are concave. The pus-corpuscles are thus peculiar cells which are formed in the serum of pus,—i. e. in cytoblastema, exuded during inflammation, in increased quantity, and of anomalous composition,— precisely in the same manner that mucus-corpuscles originate in mucus, and, indeed, as all cells form in their cytoblastema, in accordance with the fundamental law already laid down. According to the observations of H. Wood, they appear to be earliest formed upon the surface of the granulations, and for the reason that their cytoblastema, the pus-serum, is constantly exuding freshest at that part, and therefore possesses in that situation the greatest amount of plastic force, as we have already observed in reference to the formation of new yelk-cells on the outside and in the neighbourhood of the vitelline membrane. It is, however, probable that the pus-cells pursue an independent growth for a period, as we have seen to be the case with respect to those yelk-cells which were far removed from the vitelline membrane. It is also most likely that the nuclei of the pus-cells are their first formed part, but I have no investigations on the subject. The more healthy the pus, the greater is its plastic force, and the greater the number of cells which are formed in it, so that in healthy pus the quantity of serum is very small in comparison with the number of cells.
I cannot state whether the oil-globules which are present in certain secretions, such as milk and chyle, are contained in cells or not. I have not been able to detect anything indicating that they are so in milk; and, according to the theory of the secretions, which will be communicated at a subsequent stage of the work, there does not appear to be any necessity why they should be so.
