102 THE ADRENALS AND THE RESPIRATORY BLOOD-CHANGES. 



Hoppe-Seyler's belief that "the anatomical changes in sul- 

 phonal poisoning are really secondary to the destruction of the 

 red blood-disks." Trional poisoning is also stated to be at- 

 tended with hajmatoporphyrinuria, though to a less pronounced 

 degree. Santonin is stated to sometimes give the urine a pur- 

 plish-red color. Oxalic acid was also found by Rabuteau to 

 cause the blood to become "everywhere scarlet." Taylor 71 did 

 not, according to Wood, observe this phenomenon in all cases: 

 a discrepancy easily accounted for by differences in the quan- 

 tity of poison taken. 



The toxic agents analyzed in Wood's "Therapeutics" rep- 

 resent all those in which references to blood-changes have been 

 made, and we thus have ample evidence that all agents capable 

 of acting as toxics may give rise to disintegration of the blood 

 similar to those which were herein described as being of supra- 

 renal origin. The following postulates, therefore, appear to 

 us to rest upon a firm foundation: 



1. The adrenals are stimulated or functionally depressed by 

 venoms or poisons according to the dose introduced into the cir- 

 culation. 



2. Variations in the functional activity of the adrenals induce 

 corresponding variations in the mutual affinity of the bodies enter- 

 ing into the haemoglobin-molecule. 



INSUFFICIENCY OF THE ADRENALS AS A SOURCE OF BLOOD- 

 DISINTEGRATION. 



METH^MOGLOBIN. Gamgee has shown that lessened 

 oxidation coincides, when sufficiently advanced, with the dis- 

 appearance of the spectrum bands of oxyhaemoglobin, and that 

 these are replaced by others practically those of acid haematin 

 which give the blood the chocolate color assumed by it in 

 the earlier stages of haemoglobin-disintegration. Wood says, 

 referring to this acid haematin: "Recent researches have dem- 

 onstrated that the spectrum of this new compound is identical 

 with that of the methaemoglobin of Hoppe-Seyler." 72 That this 

 methsemoglobin represents an early stage of haemoglobin- 

 disintegration is evident from the fact that Gamgee "showed 



71 Taylor: "Medical Jurisprudence," i, 224. 



72 Hoppe-Seyler: Zeitschrift f. Prak. Chemie, vols. ii and ill. 



