This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
Professor Fonio, whose studies on blood platelets have been continuously appearing since 1911, has, with an associate, summarized in a small concise monograph his recent efforts to visualize the process of coagulation with an ultramicroscope under dark field illumination. There are truly remarkable photographs of the resting and the irritated thrombocyte, of the growth of pseudopodia, of the agglutination of platelets followed by the liberation of vesicles containing thrombokinase and, finally, of the precipitation of needles of fibrin as the end point of thrombosis. This work is all the more remarkable as it provides a morphologic basis for physicochemical phenomena. It proves that purely morphologic investigations, undertaken with improved technics, still play an important part in the furthering of knowledge. The senior author, who is professor of surgery at the University of Bern, does not draw any practical conclusions from his studies; he seemingly wished to emphasize the central role