and ellipsoidal surfaces, and this again is manifestly not a surface of equiôÙlibôÙrium.
Two facts are especially noteworthy in connection with the form of the blood-corpuscle. In the first place, its form is only maintained, that is to say it is only in equiôÙlibôÙrium, in relation to certain properties of the medium in which it floats. If we add a little water to the blood, the corpuscle quickly loses its charôÙacôÙterôÙisôÙtic shape and becomes a spherical drop, that is to say a true surface of minimal area and of stable equiôÙlibôÙrium. If on the other hand we add a strong solution of salt, or a little glycerine, the corpuscle contracts, and its surface becomes puckered and uneven. In these phenomena it is so far obeying the laws of diffusion and of surface tension. {272}
In the second place, it can be exactly imitated artificially by means of other colloid substances. Many years ago Norris made the very interesting observation that in an emulsion of glue the drops assumed a biconcave form resembling that of the mammalian corpuscles54. The glue was impure, and doubtless contained lecithin; and it is possible (as Professor Waymouth Reid tells me) to make a similar emulsion with cerebrosides and cholesterin oleate, in which the same conformation of the drops or particles is beautifully shewn. Now such cholesterin bodies have an important place among those in which Lehmann and others have shewn and studied the formation of fluid crystals, that is to say of bodies in which the forces of cryôÙstalôÙliôÙsaôÙtion and the forces of surface tension are battling with one another55; and, for want of a better explanation, we may in the meanwhile suggest that some such cause is at the bottom of the conformation the explanation of which presents so many difficulties. But we must not, perhaps, pass from this subject without adding that the case is a difficult and complex one from the physiological point of view. For the surface of a blood-corpuscle consists of a ãsemi-permeable membrane,ã through which certain substances pass freely and not others (for the most part anions and not cations), and it may be, accordingly, that we have in life a continual state of osmotic inequiôÙlibôÙrium, of negative osmotic tension within, to which comparatively simple cause the imperfect distension of the corpuscle may be also due56. The whole phenomenon would be comparatively easy to understand if we might postulate a stiffer peripheral region to the corpuscle, in the form for instance of a peripheral elastic ring. Such an annular thickening or stiffening, like the ãcollapse-ringsã which an engineer inserts in a boiler, has been actually asserted to exist, but its presence is not authenticated.
But it is not at all improbable that we have still much to learn about the phenomena of osmosis itself, as manifested in the case of minute bodies such as a blood-corpuscle; and (as Professor Peddie suggests to me) it is by no means impossible that curvature {273} of the surface may itself modify the osmotic or perhaps the adsorptive action. If it should be found