On the white, or opaque serum of the blood.

Andrew Buchanan

Date:: [1844]

Credit: On the white, or opaque serum of the blood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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of Tulpius, who conceived the white matter in the serum to be ab- sorbed milk, and warns his patient against that beverage in time to come. Haller himself, however, takes no notice of this colour of the serum, and many of his expressions obviously imply a belief that the whiteness was an attribute of the whole mass of blood.* The only appearance, so far as I have ever seen, which could justify the appli- cation of such epithets to the blood, is that observed in inflammatory blood, which, when just about to coagulate, becomes whitish or bluish upon the surface. But this affords no solution of the difficulty as to the words of Haller, who expressly states that he omits all consi- deration of such blood.t We are therefore unwillingly compelled to recollect, that the same great physiologist, after a laborious exami- nation of the arguments on both sides, declares that there is little or no difference in appearance between arterial and venous blood ; and to conclude that the observations then made as to the colour of the blood were not worthy of implicit reliance. Hewson introduced a more accurate mode of speaking of these phe- nomena, by referring the whiteness to the serum, and not to the general mass of blood. Hewson, also, first minutely described this condition of the serum, and analysed the circumstances on which it appeared to him to depend. He rejects the opinion, which was preva- lent previous to his time, that the white colour was owing to unassimi- lated chyle circulating in the blood vessels. He ascribes it, on the contrary, to fat absorbed from the adipose tissue, which he supposes to be taken up more rapidly than the wants of the system require, and, therefore, to accumulate in the blood vessels. He further regards the phenomenon as generally connected with a state of disease ; as with plethora, or a stoppage of natural evacuations. Such has been the authority of the name of Hewson, that both these opinions have been taught in the schools of physic ever since his time, and are generally received by the most eminent physicians of the present day. John Hunter stands almost alone in rejecting Hewson’s doctrine, that the whiteness of the serum is owing to absorbed fat, “ which,” he says, “is certainly not the case ; for it is not the same in all casesby which I understand him to mean, that the characters of white serum are not sufficiently uniform to warrant the supposition, that the colour is always occasioned by the same substance. Hunter also rejects the opinion that the white colour is due to unassimilated chyle ; “ because, it does not occur frequently enough ” to be ascribed to that cause. He ob- served it most “ frequently in the blood of breeding women,” and therefore conceived it might have some connection with the pregnant state; but, as ho observed it also in other females and in men, he * Nempe in vivis animalibus, chyluni albo suo coloro conspicuum, sajpe per vasa san- guinea oberrare, de vulnere fluere, aut in cor ipsum apertum de auricula cffundi vidi. Tom. ii. p. 14, Element. Phys. + Id. ibid.

On the white, or opaque serum of the blood.

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