Excerpt from On the Coagulation of the Blood: The Croonian Lecture Delivered Before the Royal Society of London, 11th June 1863

The same principle may be illustrated by an exceedingly simple experiment which I performed only this very day. Receiving blood from the throat of a bullock into two similar wide-mouthed bottles, I immediately stirred one of them with a clean ivory rod for 10 seconds very gently, so as to avoid the introduction of any air, and then left both undisturbed. At the end of a certain number of minutes I found that, while the blood which had not been disturbed could be poured out as a fluid, with the exception of a thin layer of clot on the surface, and an incrustation on the interior of the vessel, the blood in the other vessel, which had been stirred for so brief a period, was already a solid mass.

I have only lately been aware of the great influence exerted upon the blood by exposure for a very short time to a foreign solid; and I feel that many of my own experiments, and many performed by others, have been vitiated for want of this knowledge. Take, for example, the effect of a vacuum, which was observed by Sir Charles Scudamore to promote coagulation. This has been considered by Dr. Richardson as an illustration of his theory, the vacuum being sup posed to act by favouring the escape of ammonia. I have lately inquired into this subject, and I feel no doubt whatever that the greater rapidity of coagulation in a vacuum depends simply on the greater disturbance of the fluid. I made the following experiment I filled three bottles, such as these, from the throat of a bullock, placed one of them under the small bell jar of an air-pump in good order and exhausted it, leaving the other two undisturbed. The blood happened to be slow in coagulating; and at the end of about forty minutes, in the vessels where the blood had been undisturbed, there was only a slight film of coagulum on the surface, whereas the blood under the vacuum was found on examination to have a very thick crust of clot. Upon it. But during the process of exhaustion the blood had bubbled very much. Indeed, any exhaustion of blood recently drawn which is sufficient to cause the evolution of its gasesinduces great bubbling; so that the pump cannot be used freely, for fear of the froth overflowing. To this disturbance, involving the exposure of successive portions of blood in the bubbles to the sides of the vessel, I was inclined to attribute the more rapid coagulation; but in order to prove the point, I stirred for a few seconds the blood in one of the vessels hitherto undisturbed. After eight minutes I emptied the three vessels. I found that that blood which had not been disturbed at all, either by the vacuum or bv the rod, was still almost entirely fluid, only showing a thin crust upon the glass and on the surface exposed to the air. The blood which had been subjected to the vacuum had a thick crust of clot on the surface, and the sides of the glass were also thickly encrusted, but it still con tained a considerable quantity of fluid that could be poured out from its, interior. But that blood which had been stirred for only a few seconds was a solid mass throughout. In other words, gentle stir ring of the blood for a few seconds had much greater effect in pro ducing coagulation than the protracted and efficient exhaustion which was continued for upwards of 40 minutes, which was a considerable time after all evolution of gas, as indicated by bubbles, had ceased.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com