HEMOLYSIS IX DISEASE 229 



tion to their agglutinative power. The hemolytic iutermediary bodies 

 are resistant to heat, suffering but slight loss of power at 100° C. 

 •Red corpuscles of the frog are not hemolyzed by venom, and those of 

 ■necturus (mud pui)py ) but slightly, agreeing with the known resist- 

 ance of cold-blooded animals to snake-bites. 



The erythrocytes of different individuals show considerable varia- 

 tions in their resistance to hemolytic agents, perhaps depending upon 

 the amount or upon the manner of fixation of the lipoids in the cor- 

 puscles; thus, the corpuscles of syphilitics show a heightened resist- 

 ance to hemolysis by cobra venom (Weil) " except in the earliest 

 stages, when they are hypersensitive. Also, the serum of persons suf- 

 fering from various diseases, especially mental diseases, inhibits the 

 hemolysis of human corpuscles by cobra venom.'*" After splenectomy 

 there is an increased resistance to venom hemolysis.^"'^ 



Eel serum is remarkably hemolytic, so much so that a quantity of 

 0.1 c.c. per kilogram of body weight will kill a rabbit or guinea-pig 

 in three minutes when injected intravenously. Heating at 5-4° C. 

 for fifteen minutes destroys the hemolytic action, and, unlike ordinary 

 serum hemolysins the addition of complement does not restore its ac- 

 tivity. Animals can be immunized against this serum. Introduced 

 into the stomach in ordinary quantities eel serum is not toxic. It can 

 be dried and redissolved without losing its activity, but acids and 

 alkalies readily destroy it. Mosso, who first discovered the toxicity of 

 eel serum, called the unknown active principle ichthyotoxin. ]\Iany 

 other animals produce hemolytic poisons (e. g., spiders, bees) which 

 are diseussetl under Zootoxins, Chapter vi. 



HEMOLYSIS IN DISEASE 



During health there is always going on a certain amount of de- 

 struction of red corpuscles that have outlived their usefulness; hence 

 in disease we may have to deal with either an alteration in the nor- 

 mal processes of blood destruction or the introduction of entirely new 

 processes. Although the place and manner of normal red corpuscle 

 destruction is not completely known, yet it seems probable that there 

 is relatively little hemolysis wathin the circulating blood. When a 

 red corpuscle becomes damaged, it seems to become more susceptible 

 to phagocytosis, and it is then picked out of the blood, chiefly by the 

 endothelial cells of the sinuses of the liver, spleen, hemolymph glands, 

 and bone-marrow. Within these cells it apparently undergoes hemo- 

 lysis. Eventually, the resulting pigment is split up by the liver, the 

 non-ferruginous portion forming the bile-pigments, while the iron 

 seems to be mostly withheld to be worked over into new hemoglobin.*"'' 



79 Jour. Infect. Dis., 1909 (6), 688; Stone and Schottstaedt, Arch. Int. :Med., 

 1912 (10), 8. 



80 See articles on this siibject in the !Miinch. med. Woch., 1909, Vol. .56. 

 soaKolmer, .Tonr. Exp. Med., 1917 (25), 195. 



sobMuir and Dunn (Jour. Path, and Bact, 1915 (20), 41), find that after 



