Page:Blood examination.djvu/28

16 believes from his cases that the higher the leucocytosis the worse the prognosis, and states that the large mononuclears show an absolute increase in the worst cases. In no other disease has the blood been found to give an acid reaction, and this only occurs towards the fatal termination of a case.

In relapsing fever a leucocytosis also occurs during the febrile periods, and at the same time the spirilla are to be found in the blood plasma, thus at once excluding typhus. To differentiate from malaria during an afebrile period, apart from the finding of malaria parasites, Löwenthal found that the serum of a suspected case, if relapsing fever, would kill the live spirilla from another patient on a slide.

Nothing has yet been found distinctive in the blood of patients suffering from sprue or beri beri.

Leprosy, commoner in the Tropics than elsewhere, shows no leucocytosis, but a slight relative increase of lymphocytes. Brown has succeeded in demonstrating the bacillus from the blood in half his cases.

Speaking generally, skin diseases and nearly all the worms produce an eosinophilia which may be persistent, but in many cases is only temporary.