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ans, notably the contributions of Woop Crarke and HurtreY *) and of 
Mackenzie Warris ®) seem to indicate that as a rule this sulphaemo- 
globinaemia is presumably owing to a stasis in the large intestine. 
That we had indeed to do with the sulphuretted hydrogen-compound 
of haemoglobin was evident from the spectrum of the blood in these 
conditions, which is quite similar to that of sulphaemoglobin: 
besides the two familiar bands of the haemoglobin, a band is also 
discernible in the red near 4 617. None of the other substances 
examined by us displayed such a spectrum. It appeared moreover 
that reducing substances, acting on the blood of these patients, did 
not take this band away, whereas the band of the methaemoglobin, 
which resembles most the sulphaemoglobin, disappears directly after 
the addition of ammonium sulphid or of Srokes’ reagent. Chemically 
however we could not demonstrate sulphuretted hydrogen in the 
bloodserum. This was all the more surprising because according to 
Erten Meymrr’s investigations the chemical methods to demonstrate 
H,S are much more sensitive than the spectroscopic. This tallies 
with the fact that in cadaveric blood drawn twice 24 hours after 
death, sulphuretted hydrogen is chemically demonstrable in the 
serum, while spectroscopically nothing might be seen of a sulphae- 
moglobin-absorption band. 
To my colleague Prof. Lameris I am especially indebted for the 
observation of a young patient, who was suffering from an entero- 
genous cyanosis due to snlphaemoglobinaemia, and who enabled us 
to inspect more narrowly the above-named problem. This boy suffers 
from the so-called Hirscusprune’s disease i.e. a marked dilatation 
of the colon, existing from birth, and in large measure obstructed 
defecation. The investigations, which I purpose to record here 
have for the major portion been conducted by Dr. ENGELKrs. 
In co-operation with him [ have tried to set at rest the above ques- 
tion. To begin with it appeared that the boy’s blood presented a 
marked sulfo-band. We could contirm the phenomenon detected by 
West and CLARKE *®) that, in sulphaemoglobinaemia, on passing pure 
carbon monoxid in a solution of sulphaemoglobin, the band in the 
red is shifted 5 wavelengths to the right. In addition we could 
superadd a new reaction on sulphaemoglobin to the previous one. 
If namely a drop of a 1°/, sol. of potassium cyanid is added to a 
sol. of SHb, the sulfo-band will persist at room-temperature for a 
long time; the MHb-band disappears directly. Addition of a very 
1) Woop CLARKE and Hurttey, Journ. Physiol. 1907, XXXVI, 62. 
2) Mackenzie WALLIS, the Quarterly Journal of Medicine, 1913, VII, 73. 
8) West and Woop CLARKE, Lancet, 1907, I, 272. 
90* 
