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Donné, Alfred François (1801-78). Mémoire sur les caractères distinctifs du pus, et les moyens de reconnaitre la presence de ce liquide dans les différens fluids auxquels il se trouve mélangé, particulièrement dans le sang. Offprint from Archives générales de médecine, 2nd series, 11 (1836). 30pp. 206 x 128 mm. Modern marbled wrappers. Very good. Old library stamp on title, 19th-century inscription beneath the imprint. First Edition, Extremely Rare Offprint Issue, with only one copy (Paris Bib. Serv. Sante Armées) cited in OCLC. Donné s paper on the origin and properties of pus includes his eponymous test for the presence of pus in all bodily fluids except whole blood, as described on page 13: "[A] very small quantity of any pus, when mixed with a little concentrated ammonia in a watch glass, and shaken, gives rise instantly or after a few minutes, to a slimy and stringy matter, very similar, in appearance, to the matter of certain sputum or to the albumen of the egg" [translation]. He notes that other writers, including Augustin-Nicolas Gendrin and Gabriel Andral, had described the ammonia-pus reaction, "but these authors do not seem to me to have attached enough value to this really important characteristic" (p. 13). Unfortunately, as Donné states, this test cannot be used to distinguish the presence of pus in blood, since ammonia coagulates whole blood the same way it does pus. Through further investigation Donné found that the presence of pus in recently drawn blood can best be seen via microscopic examination, since "the shape of [pus] globules is so different from that of blood globules that it is not possible to confuse them with each other" (pp. 17-18); however, when microscopic analysis is not possible or practical, purulent blood can be distinguished by its liquidity and purplish tint. He also found that pus can dissolve blood clots, leaving only "purulent globules," and that the resulting liquid apparently had the power to transform blood into pus. Donné also observed that "the purest blood taken from the healthiest individual . . . sometimes present[s] a certain number of globules larger than the others, fringed on the edges, without a central nucleus . . . very similar to pus, although less opaque" (p. 18). Donné is very likely referring here to white blood cells (leukocytes), which were first identified by William Addison and Gabriel Andral circa 1843; dead white blood cells are a major component of pus. .
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