Under the microscope the white corpuscles seem like little round disks, about one-third bigger than the red corpuscles with a large Kernel, or Nucleus in the center.

Shape and Behavior of White Blood Cells

Their shape and behavior of these cells is very similar to Ameba, a tiny “Bug” seen only under the microscope that lives in ditch-water. They have the same power of changing their shape, of surrounding and swallowing scraps of food, as Ameba does, and are a combination of scavengers and sanitary police.

Our blood-tubes are not only supply-pipes, but sewers and drainage canals as well. For all these purposes, nature has made a provision by placing White Blood Cells along-with the RED Blood Cells. These are some kind of tiny animals living and moving around the RED Blood Cells, which act as scavengers and eat up some of the waste and scraps; and hence your microscope will show you another kind of little blood corpuscle, known as the white corpuscle, from the fact that it is not colored.

How White Blood Cells Work

When disease germs enter the blood, these White Blood Cells attack and eat and digest them; and whenever inflammation, or trouble of any sort, starts in any part of our body, they hurry to that sight in thousands; and hence clog the blood-tubes and squeeze their way out through the walls of the smallest blood-tubes to attack the intruder or repair the damage. This results in the well-known swelling and reddening which accompanies inflammation.

Counting of the WBC and RBC Cells

Blood, is a sticky red fluid, 66.667 % of which is food-soup, and the remaining 33% constitutes, what we call – The Corpuscles. The Size of the blood-corpuscles may be guessed from the fact that there are at approx. 5,000,000 red cells and 10,000 white cells in every cubic centimeter i.e. fifteen drops of our blood.

A consistently high number of white blood cells is an indication of Leukemia, a cancer of the blood. The WBC Cells count in Leukemia patient may go up-to 50,000 Nos. in a single drop of blood.