Theories and Experiments 259 



And so, beyond any doubt, altitude favors venous stases. When 

 they are superficial, one cannot deny that the decrease of the air 

 pressure acts in a purely mechanical sense towards this result. The 

 superficial capillary networks, deprived of their natural external 

 support, expand with an ease in proportion to the decrease in the 

 weight. If to this first cause you add a blood not sufficiently stimu- 

 lating for the arteries and too abundant in general for the veins, you 

 reach the etiological trinity: lessened external adjuvant, organic 

 sluggishness, general congestion of the venous system; a trinity the 

 effects of which will be directed by turns to different parts of the 

 organism, depending upon where the disturbances in innervation have 

 previously prepared for them. (P. 254.) 



Two years later, there appeared a long memoir by the same 

 author. 93 



The mere title of this second work, The Anemia of Altitudes, 

 indicates the idea of M. Jourdanet: in his opinion, "the dwellers 

 at great elevations, above 2000 meters, are generally anemic", and 

 this condition is particularly evident to the eyes of the practitioner 

 by the syndrome. And yet the chemical analysis of the blood 

 strangely contradicts what the clinical observation revealed: 



In 1849, while I was in Puebla, I wished to ascertain by 

 analytical examination of the blood whether the proportion of 

 corpuscles was reduced. I made my first investigation on a young 

 man twenty-five years old whom I knew to be suffering from gas- 

 tralgias and vertigo. He fell from his horse, and the consequences 

 of this fall made bleeding necessary. My analytical tests were made 

 on blood obtained in these circumstances. They showed me that the 

 proportion of corpuscles was 151/1000. I repeated my experiments 

 upon four young women who were bled following accidents. Their 

 pallor, their general prostration, and their nervous condition showed 

 that they were suffering from chloro-anemia, although auscultation 

 revealed no arterial murmur. Their blood furnished the normal 

 proportions of corpuscles. (P. 8.) 



What is the explanation of this apparent contradiction? It is 

 that: 



The principal duty of the blood corpuscles is to serve as aid to 

 the real agent of our life. When their proportion is reduced in the 

 blood, it is no doubt correct to say that the sickness is the result 

 of the decrease in corpuscles; but we would fix the immediate cause 

 -of the symptoms of the disease more accurately if we attributed its 

 existence to the decrease in oxygen. I think I am more justified in 

 expressing myself in this way because if, in the case of anemia, we 

 call attention, as it is natural to do, to the reduced proportion of this 

 gas in circulation, we see several causes which may produce this 

 circulatory anomaly, without finding it necessary to explain it by a 

 decrease in the number of corpuscles. That, exactly, is the case in 

 the anemia of altitudes. (P. 10.) 



