The metabolism of the blood itself 



125 



into two portions. One of these, B, is rapidly defibrinated by vigorous 

 shaking, the other, A, is defibrinated very slowly. In the latter case 

 blood-counts showed that there were three times as many nucleated 

 corpuscles as in the former, yet the percentage of reduction was not 

 very different in the two cases. 



Experiment on dog. 



Experiment on rabbit. 



A short while ago I came across an instance of the type of blood 

 which Morawitz describes. The observation is not without interest 

 in itself and it may be useful as a warning to some. I will therefore 

 describe it. 



In the Biochemical Journal Moore and Wilson (4) published some 

 observations on the alkalinity of the blood in cancer. It occurred to 

 me that such changes in reaction could be observed by exposing the 

 blood to a known oxygen pressure and observing whether the haemo- 

 globin became more or less saturated with oxygen than would 

 normally have been the case. 



Dr Hopkins was kind enough to give me the blood of numerous 

 rats, which he was killing at the time and which had grown sarcomata. 

 The result of the experiment seemed interesting beyond my ex- 

 pectation, for the rats with sarcomata possessed blood which reduced 

 to a much greater extent than did the blood of normal rats. Indeed 

 it was possible to draw a very presentable curve showing that the 



... reduced haemoglobin ,. 



quantity 01 , , . x 100 or percentage reduction ot 



total haemoglobin 



the blood exposed to 17mm. oxygen pressure followed the weights 



