llEMOUiniACK 297 



of brown or yellowish-brown granules, never as crystals. After a 

 time the hemosiderin is taken away, and probably is to a greater or 

 less extent deposited in the liver and spleen, either as hemosiderin 

 or as some other iron compound. Eventually it is probably utilized 

 to make new hemoglobin; at any rate, the iron liberated by the break- 

 ing up of hematin within the body does not appear to be eliminated.'^ 



The changes in the red corpuscles described above are not at all 

 peculiar to cxtravasated blood, but are quite the same as the changes 

 that are going on continuously and normally in the blood. Red cor- 

 puscles are short-lived, being but non-nuclcatcd fragments of cells, 

 and they are continually disintegrating with the production of iron- 

 free pigments that are excreted as the coloring-matters of the bile and 

 urine, while the iron is worked over again into new hemoglobin after 

 a varying period of storage in the tissues, particularly in the spleen 

 and liver. The destruction of red corpuscles under normal conditions 

 seems to take place chiefly in the spleen, bone-marrow, and hemo- 

 lymph glands, where injured or decrepit corpuscles are taken out of 

 the blood by the phagocytic endothelial cells, and decomposed by 

 intracellular enzymes. In hemorrhagic extravasations the changes 

 are essentially the same; some corpuscles are destroyed by phago- 

 cytes, but more by extracellular enzymes. The products of decom- 

 position also seem to be no difTerent from those formed during 

 normal katabolism of hemoglobin, and they meet the same fate in 

 the end. 



If the hemorrhages are very abundant, some hemoglobin may be 

 absorbed as such and appear in the urine, but this probably seldom 

 happens unless red corpuscles are also being destroj-ed in the circu- 

 lating blood. '^ An increased amount of iron accumulates in the 

 liver, but if much blood has been lost by hemorrhage on free surfaces, 

 the iron content of the liver is decreased, as it is taken away to form 

 new hemoglobin (Quincke).'* Excretion of bile-pigments is increased 

 by destruction of blood (Stadelmann), but not greatlj^ in the case of 

 internal hemorrhages, for the blood is decomposed and absorbed 

 too slowly. Schurig'^ found that hemoglobin injected into the tissues 

 is partly decomposed in situ with formation of iron compounds, 

 but the greater part enters the circulation as hemoglobin, and is 

 partly converted into bile-pigment by the liver-cells, the rest being 

 converted into simpler iron compounds by the spleen, bone-marrowy, 

 and renal cortex. 



If the hemorrhagic extravasation has been large in amount, the 

 deeper portions of the mass are not soon, if ever, invaded by leucocytes 



32 See Morishima, Arch. f. exp. Path., 1898 (41), 291. 



'3 In cerebral hemorrhage the blood serum may be greenish and somewhat 

 fluorescent from absorbed pigment, according to Marie and Leri, Union Pharra., 

 Aug. 15, 1914. 



" Deut. Arch. klin. Med., 1880 (25). 567; 1880 (27), 193. 



36 Arch. exp. Path. u. Pharm., 1898 (41), 29. 



