Page:The third Huxley lecture.pdf/51

47 remarkable peculiarity of being destitute of this general aggregating property of solids, behaving rather like the self-repelling particles of gases.

It was not only in vessels of small size, like those of the sheep's foot, that the blood remained fluid in parts severed from the body. I found that the same was the case in veins of the dimensions of the jugular of the ox or the horse, and this in spite of their entire detachment from surrounding structures. The vessel being exposed after the animal had been felled at the abattoir, two ligatures were applied in order to retain the blood in it, after which it was removed and taken home with as little disturbance as possible. The blood in it retained its fluidity for upwards of 24 hours, affording opportunity for most instructive experiments. Of these I must content myself with describing one. A portion of an ox's jugular with its contained blood being held vertically, the upper part was removed along with its ligature, and the lips of the now open venous compartment were held apart with forceps by aid of an assistant, while a thin glass tube, of rather smaller calibre than the vein and open at both ends, was passed down into the vessel with the utmost steadiness, so as to disturb the blood as little as