AND PERSONALITY 



though it has not been proved, that the red blood cell, like 

 the voluntary muscle cell, is a descendant from the ancestral 

 unicellular cytoplasm whose negative charge was accumu- 

 lated at its surface. 



The first fact that emerged from my study of this problem 

 was the determination of Hugo Fricke, in the biophysics 

 laboratory of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, that the 

 envelope surrounding the red blood cell is on the order of 

 1/2,500,000 centimeter in thickness, or about the thickness 

 of a molecule of oil or of 30 carbon atoms. This extreme 

 thinness endows the red blood cell with a high capacity for 

 holding electric charge, and the peculiar biconcave shape 

 of the red blood cell, which is ideally adapted for tumbling 

 and friction, increases the surface area of its covering 

 membrane. 



In order to account for the electric charge-up of the 

 twenty-five trillion red blood cells in the human being, we 

 turned to the well-known electrophysical principle that a 

 particle moving in air or in fluid takes on static charge, the 

 amount of charge being related to the intensity of friction. 

 This is the principle on which particles floating in the air 

 through friction take on negative or static charge and, being 

 of like sign of charge, repel each other and float as dust. 



I postulated that this electrophysical principle could 

 be applied to the origin of the electric charge on red blood 

 cells, since the heart, with its powerful contraction, causes 

 such violent agitation among the red blood cells that the 

 red blood cells would become charged with static electricity 

 and repel each other and not agglutinate. 



In collaboration with me, Dr. Otto Glasser and Dr. D. 

 P. Quiring, of the Research Laboratories of the Cleveland 

 'Clinic Foundation, tested this principle 1 for the charge-up 

 of the red blood cells through the action of the heart and 



1 "A Study of the Potential Gradients of the Blood and the Organs of Certain 

 Mammals," paper presented before the Society for Experimental Biology and 

 Medicine, at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, in Seattle, June 20, 1940. To be published. 



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