Читать книгу The Body at Work: A Treatise on the Principles of Physiology онлайн

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The valiant leucocytes do their best to cope with all the rubbish, whether living or dead, that needs removal. They flock to any situation in which germs are numerous or tissue has been destroyed. If all goes well they take the foreign matter into their substance—dead tissue is matter foreign to the body—and either digest it in the course of their ordinary progress, or retreat with it, if they cannot digest it, to the nearest lymphatic gland. But in their efforts to reach objectionable matter they are apt to wander too far from the healthy lymph from which they obtain oxygen for their own respiration. Unable to breathe, they die. They lose the power of extruding pseudopodia. Their extensible, prehensile processes are drawn in. Assuming a globular form, they float helplessly in what once was lymph. Their body-proteins are largely changed to fat. As “pus cells,” they are thrown off in the discharge from an ulcer, or accumulate in the cavity of an abscess. A pus cell is a dead and fattily degenerated leucocyte.