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We're the white corpuscles, phagocytes, the scientists call us, and our work is to police the blood-vessels, and kill off invaders that make trouble. Those red-and-gray chumps can't take care of themselves, and we must protect 'em. Understand? But this invasion was too much for us, and we had to have help from outside. You must have come in with the first crowd think I saw you in at the bite.
Among the fibroblasts, larger multi-nucleated cells giant cells are sometimes found, particularly when resistant substances, such as silk ligatures or fragments of bone, are embedded in the tissues, and their function seems to be to soften such substances preliminary to their being removed by the phagocytes.
To this process Metchnikoff gave the name of phagocytosis, and he recognised two forms of phagocytes: the microphages, which are the polymorpho-nuclear leucocytes of the blood; and the macrophages, which include the larger hyaline leucocytes, endothelial cells, and connective-tissue corpuscles.
In four and twenty hours Hampton had "caught" Syndicalism. All day Tuesday, before the true nature of the affection was developed, prominent citizens were outraged and appalled by the supineness of their municipal phagocytes.
They say hope springs eternal in the human breast, but my breast didn't feel human just then. It was throbbing with savage and sanguinary thoughts. Perhaps it was the eggs. Many animals are rendered ferocious by an over-diet of meat. I think they stimulate the wrong kind of phagocytes. They can make the mildest and most forgiving person wild and vindictive.
It is proved that this aroused avidity of the phagocytes is due to no change in the phagocytes themselves; since if they are transferred to the serum of a normal man they show no such predilection for the special invading microbe. The "opsonin," or "relish," is something exuded into or produced in the blood fluid when the attacking microbe arrives.
A substance that is absorbable, such as catgut or fine silk, is surrounded and permeated by the phagocytes, which soften and disintegrate it, the debris being gradually absorbed in much the same manner as a fibrinous exudate.
He deals in Latin and Greek terms of resounding and disheartening combinations. At his hands anatomy and markings become lost in a scientific jargon of patagia, jugum, discocellulars, phagocytes, and so on to the end of the volume. For one who would be a Naturalist, a rare specimen indeed, there are many volumes on the market.
The situation was saved when Sir Almroth Wright pointed out that if you inoculated a patient with pathogenic germs at a moment when his powers of cooking them for consumption by the phagocytes was receding to its lowest point, you would certainly make him a good deal worse and perhaps kill him, whereas if you made precisely the same inoculation when the cooking power was rising to one of its periodical climaxes, you would stimulate it to still further exertions and produce just the opposite result.
It is of the utmost importance to us that our white corpuscles, or eater-cells, should not be sluggish but greedy. Why? Because they are at once eaten by the vigilant phagocytes of the blood before they can produce any appreciable amount of poison. That is easily demonstrated by experiment.
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