94 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
results of his own experiments. Repeating Wright’s work, but using 
a different and more reliable method, he was unable to substantiate 
Wright’s conclusion, finding that neither calcium nor citrates had the 
slightest effect in altering the coagulation time. This discrepancy 
he attributes to the use by Wright of a faulty method. His objections 
to the technique is that in the Wright coagulometer the blood is ex- 
posed too much to the air, is brought too much in contact with foreign 
material, and is not kept at a constant temperature. Using Bogg’s 
modification of Brodie and Russell’s apparatus, and, later, his own 
modification of McGowan’s method, in which these objections are prac- 
tically eliminated, he obtained quite different, and as he believes, more 
accurate results. It is true that the addition in vitro of a certain amount 
of calcium (between 0.036 to 0.110 per cent shortens the coagulation 
time; between 0.110 and 0.366 per cent increases it; and 0.550 per 
cent prevents coagulation altogether, Wright.) markedly alters the 
coagulation time, but the experimental work shows that the amount 
necessary to shorten the time positively is much greater than it is 
possible to produce in the blood by even large doses of calcium. Or 
in other words, while calcium administered by the mouth or by intra- 
venous injection, increases the amount of ionizable calcium in the blood, 
and salts of citric acid lessen it, the effect produced is too small to 
materially alter the coagulation time. If this be so, and it seems very 
likely, then the whole superstructure of therapeutics built upon Wright’s 
work falls to the ground like a house of cards. 
It remains to say a word about the relation of the coagulation time 
to the blood pressure. I have been unable as yet to trace any asso- 
ciation. In typhoid fever the blood pressure is consistently low, in my 
observation being from 114 to as low as 85. In a case with the highest 
blood pressure (114), the coagulation time was the longest, four and a 
quarter minutes. But other cases exhibited a certain amount of paral- 
lelism. My observations are too few as yet for any certain conclusion 
to be reached. I hope to continue my studies on a more extended 
series of cases and by improved methods so as to speak with more defin- 
iteness on the disputed matters. In the meantime, without desiring 
to prejudge the case, after weighing all the evidence, and taking into 
consideration my own tentative work, I shall not be surprised if we 
eventually find that the therapeutic importance of calcium salts has 
been greatly overrated. 
