Abstract
SCIENTIFIC workers may like to have a brief account of some recent researches which, I think, are likely to be of both theoretical and practical interest. The researches commenced nearly five years ago in a special study of leucocytes by a method devised by my brother, Mr. H. C. Ross, and myself. This consists in placing liquid blood under a cover-glass, not, as usual, upon another surface of glass, but upon a bed of transparent jelly with which various reagents, including stains, have been mixed. The original object of the method was to try to cultivate human leucocytes in vitro. At first careful studies of the rate of absorption of stains by the leucocytes under various chemical conditions of the jelly were made by Mr. Ross. Two years later he found that extract of haemal gland, extracts of apparently many dead and decomposing tissues, and globin, when mixed with the jelly, force a large proportion of the leucocytes to divide before the eyes. Subsequently, he and his assistant, Dr. J. W. Cropper, ascertained by a series of lengthy studies that many of the substances which possess this property (in different degrees) belong to the amidine grouping. They have found, also, that a second series of substances, though by themselves they cannot produce division of leucocytes, have the power of augmenting very greatly the power of the former group of substances to do so. They give the names auxetics and augmentors to the two groups respectively. The principal auxetics are extracts of organs, creatine, xanthine, creatinine, guanidine, benzamidine, theobromine, acetami-dine, caffeine, theophylline, methylamine, ethylamine, propylamine, &c., and certain aniline dyes. Some of the augmentors are various alkaloids, atropine, choline, cadaverine, neurine, &c.
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Induced Action of Leucocytes 1 . Nature 88, 231–232 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/088231a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/088231a0