Histology of the Blood: Normal and Pathological

Abstract

NOT much more than a year has elapsed since the first part of “die Anæmie,” by Ehrlich and Lazarus, appeared in Nothnagel's “System of Pathology and Therapeutics”; but during that short time the work has taken a foremost place among those dealing with the histology of the blood. Perhaps the most striking feature of the book is its originality, broad lines being laid down along which future investigators may work, and no subject is taken up without being enriched by some suggestive hypothesis based on interesting observations made by Ehrlich himself or some of his pupils. Although comparatively a small book, it may be said, without disparagement to the many other works on hæmatology, to be the one to which the term “epoch-making” may, without exaggeration, be applied. It is only possible to refer shortly to some of the most important subjects discussed in its pages. Although it is undoubtedly with reference to the leucocytes that the most important observations are made, there are also points of great interest treated of in the chapter dealing with the morphology of the erythrocytes. This is especially the case with regard to the authors' views on polychromatophilia as a sign of degeneration, and on the method of transformation of megaloblasts to megalocytes and normoblasts to normocytes. Not less important are the paragraphs dealing with the megaloblastic type of the blood and marrow in pernicious anæmia. But it is when the authors come to discuss the normal and pathological histology of the white blood corpuscles that we find on every page observations that shed light on points that have been long in obscurity.

Histology of the Blood: Normal and Pathological.

By P. Ehrlich A. Lazarus. Edited and translated by W. Myers, M.A., M.B., B.Sc. Pp. xiii + 216. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1900.)