658 Experiments 



Using on these figures the calculations which have just been 

 applied to Experiment CCXIII, we find for the coefficient of the 

 oxygen dissolved 0.75 and for the values of B and C 31.2 and 26.7. 

 The difference between the calculation and the experiment is, 

 therefore, in the first decimals, and should not disturb us. 



And so at body temperature, as at laboratory temperature, when 

 the pressure is increased, the increase in the oxygen proportion 

 follows Dalton's Law. 



On the other hand, if we refer to what was observed directly 

 in the living animal (Fig. 36, solid line) , we see that the quantity 

 of oxygen contained in the blood is considerably less than its maxi- 

 mum capacity in vitro. 



This is in part due to the fact that the oxygen in simple solutior 

 in the serum tends to penetrate also by simple solution into all tht 

 organic liquids and the tissues bathed by the blood, until an 

 equilibrium of solution is established between them and this 

 serum. 



The slowing up of the respiratory movements and the circula- 

 tion of the blood, so easy to observe in cold-blooded animals at 

 high pressures, certainly is an added factor in the diminution of 

 the quantity of oxygen introduced into the blood, by modifying 

 the conditions of the air-blood agitation taking place in the lungs. 

 There would be, on the part of the organism, a struggle for 

 equilibrium, working inversely to that which we stressed above. 



If we now refer to this observation already made several times 

 that the blood in the conditions of normal respiration is never satu- 

 rated with the oxygen that it can absorb, we shall perceive that 

 when the increase of pressure introduces a little more oxygen into 

 the blood, this oxygen will first be rapidly condensed by the blood 

 corpuscles, so that the hemoglobin of the blood is completely satu- 

 rated before a larger proportion remains in the serum. 



But from the purely chemical point of view, the data which I 

 have just reported present a new interest when they are compared 

 with those recently obtained by MM. Risler and Schutzenberger. 10 

 According to these chemists, the blood, or rather the hemoglobin, 

 from which all possible oxygen has been removed by the action 

 of the vacuum or of carbon monoxide, would still contain a quan- 

 tity almost equal to what it has just lost. 



There would therefore be here a sort of protoxy-hemoglobin, 

 which the vacuum, even when aided by heat, and which the carbon 

 monoxide could not reduce, and a deutoxy-hemoglobin, from which 

 the vacuum and the carbon monoxide could take its second equiva- 

 lent of oxygen. Beyond that, the hemoglobin, completely saturated, 

 could take up no more oxygen, whose proportion would increase 



