394 LECTURE XVII. 



vation experiments on man show that there is 7 to 8 milligrams of iron 

 eliminated daily from the intestines. 1 - Now a liter of milk contains about 

 2.3 milligrams of iron. With milk alone as food, therefore, it would be 

 necessary to drink at least four liters per day, for during starvation the 

 organism is extremely economical with its stores, and the amount of 

 iron then eliminated represents a minimum. Certain of our foods, such 

 as white bread, rice, cherries, apples, etc., are very deficient in iron. 2 It 

 is, therefore, easy to believe that people subsisting exclusively upon such 

 nourishment will have impoverished blood; and, as a matter of fact, many 

 cases of chlorosis may be accounted for in this way. The practising 

 physician, however, knows of many cases of chlorosis in which unquestion- 

 ably enough iron has been taken into the system to satisfy the ordinary 

 requirements. In such cases we are forced to assume that the function 

 of absorbing iron has in some way become disturbed, or else that the iron 

 compounds taken into the system for some reason are not utilized by the 

 organs which serve to form the blood. As a matter of fact, disturbances 

 in the function of the intestinal tract have been observed frequently in 

 chlorosis. Even in such cases, however, which are, by the way, excep- 

 tional, it is not known whether these intestinal disturbances are of a 

 primary nature, or whether they are not rather a result of the impov- 

 erished blood and the disturbances of nutritional relations which result 

 therefrom. 



The attempt has been made to decide by means of experiments upon 

 animals what the relations are between iron introduced into the organism 

 in an inorganic form and the formation of the blood. Two different 

 methods have been tried. We have seen that at the end of the lactation 

 period the suckling possesses a low hemoglobin content, and that this 

 increases rapidly as the animal begins to" partake of food richer in iron. 

 If, on the other hand, the animal is kept for a prolonged period upon a 

 milk diet, a marked anaemia results. That this is, as a matter of fact, the 

 case, 3 is shown by comparing the amounts of hemoglobin in animals 

 which have from birth been fed only upon milk, with that of animals 

 which, at the end of the suckling period, have passed over to a diet richer 

 in iron (vegetables). Now the addition of inorganic iron salts to the 

 milk has no effect upon the absolute amount of hemoglobin contained in 

 the animals, nor upon the amount per kilogram of the animal's weight. 

 The added iron, however, is found to have a remarkable effect in acceler- 

 ating the growth of the animal. 4 



1 Lehmann, Miiller, Munk, Senator, and Zuntz: Virchow's Arch. 131, Suppl. 1, pp. 18 

 and 67 (1893). 



2 Cf. p. 380. 



3 Emil Abderhalden: Z. Biol. 39, 193 (1899). 



4 Emil Abderhalden: Z. Biol. 39, 483 (1899). 



