ACIDITY 327 



results in the production of excess lactic acid (due to more 

 rapid oxidation). 



That an excessively acid condition has long been associated 

 with disease and may itself be a disease is evident from the term 

 "acidosis." Acidosis should not be confused with acid stomach. 

 The latter is not so serious and can be more readily treated, while 

 acidosis (of the blood) is dangerous if chronic. The attitude of 

 the medical profession toward it is not wholly uniform. While 

 one physician will regard acidosis as "certainly not acid poison- 

 ing" and a decrease in blood alkali or hydrogen ions as merely 

 incidental to something more fundamental, another will regard 

 death from diabetes as due not directly to the diabetes but to 

 the highly acid condition that results from faulty sugar metabo- 

 lism. Untreated diabetic patients are on the acid side of 

 neutrality, their pH being anyw^here from normal to 7.00; acid 

 accumulation is probably due to defective oxidation. Nephritis 

 patients are also more acid, their pH occasionally being as low 

 as 6.94. This represents an extreme minimum, as death is 

 expected to occur at any pH below 7. 



Van Slyke places the pH minimum of blood before which coma 

 occurs at 6.95. This minimum has been observed in etherized 

 dogs and in the blood of a nephritic man in coma a few hours 

 before death. The other extreme lies at about pH 7.8, reached 

 by voluntary deep breathing, causing the excessive giving off of 

 carbon dioxide. Alcohol patients are on the alkaline side. 

 A case of acute alcoholism may yield a pH of the blood of 7.61. 

 The extreme range compatible with life thus lies between 7.0 

 and 7.8, and the normal range within 7.3 and 7.5. 



Acidosis or alkalosis, whether or not it is a symptom or the 

 cause of a disease, cannot always, and can never permanently, 

 be remedied by the simple addition of an alkali or an acid — an 

 error in medicine which has resulted in the use and abuse of 

 sodium bicarbonate in therapy. The acid-alkaline equilibrium 

 of the blood is adjusted by a very intricate regulatory system 

 involving a delicate balance of carbonic acid, H2CO3, and sodium 

 bicarbonate, NaHCOa. Giving the latter to an ill person may 

 upset the proportion still further and make a bad matter worse. 

 The feeding of alkalies, such as limewater to babies, is, therefore, 

 now regarded by some as bad practice. One should, where 

 possible, get at the cause. Acidosis in infants is due to deficiency 



