Guide to the Clinical Examination of the Blood

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. About forty pages of new matter have been added, but the book is no larger than before, as a corresponding number of pages have been omitted from the bibliography. A complete bibliography of the subject would now need a separate volume, and it has therefore seemed best to omit all but the most important references.

The principal additions to the book include an account of Professor Oliver's tintometer and haemoglobinometer (which are the only new instruments of importance), new matter in the chapter on the primary anaemias, and on leukaemia, and a description of Muller's blood-dust (the newly discovered constituent of normal and abnormal blood). Bremer's and Williamson's tests for diabetic blood and the iodine reaction in the blood during acute surpurative processes are described, and blood exminations are recorded in Malta fever, yellow fever, epidemic dropsy, beri-beri, relapsing fever, tetanus, chickenpox, whooping-cough, and epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis, diseases not included in previous editions. New observations on poisoning by alcohol, opium, corrosives, and ptomains, on aneurisms, on paroxysmal haemoglobinaemia, and on cretinism are recorded.

I have wished to draw especial attention to the tendency to an oval or sausage shape among the red corpuscles in cases of grave anaemia and to the occurrence of adventitious forms of leucocytes in leucocytosis.

Some of my critics have regretted that there was so little theoretical discussion in the book. In this edition I have for the most part eliminated what little there was before. It had already become out of date.