COMPOSITION OF THE BLOOD IN ASIATIC CHOLERA. 397 



Not having the usual apparatus at hand, I improvised one, but the results were 

 too low, either because the glass connection, ground by myself, was not 

 absolutely tight, or the 1-liter bottle was too large. I therefore abandoned 

 this method and mixed the blood with 2 or 3 grams of chemically pure sodium 

 carbonate, dried it in a nickel dish and incinerated it at a very low temperature 

 but only to the point when all organic material was destroyed, no effort being 

 made to burn the charcoal. The incinerated material was extracted several 

 times with hot water, the filtrate precipitated with silver nitrate, and the ash 

 and filter then washed with dilute nitric acid. The extracts very often had a 

 slightly yellow color. In these cases the following technique proved to be very 

 satisfactory : 



After precipitation with silver nitrate, the solution was boiled and a 5 per 

 cent solution of potassium permanganate added, drop by drop, until a faint 

 rose color appeared; the excess of potassium permanganate was then reduced by 

 a few drops of ferro-ammonium-sulphate solution. The permanganate oxydized 

 all the light yellow organic material, the fluid became clear, and at the same 

 time the silver chloride became fully flocculent. The latter was determined 

 gravimetrically in some cases, and one of the two samples was titrated by 

 Volhard's method. 



The water content of the blood was determined in the second sample 

 by drying at 99° to 100° to a constant weight. Several samples of 

 blood serum from cholera patients were also analyzed in the same way. 

 Obviously, it is more difficult to secure a sufficient amount of serum than 

 it is of blood, for analyses. For comparison, I analyzed blood and blood- 

 serum of Filipino boys and students. I found practically the same 

 composition as obtains with normal Europeans. 



The second part of the study covered the examination of the blood 

 of persons dead of cholera. While one would expect to find a pronounced 

 change in the composition of the blood in cases which die and which 

 therefore are the most severe, yet, so far as I could discover, no analyses 

 heretofore have been made of the blood of cholera corpses. Through the 

 courtesy of Dr. Vernon L. Andrews, of the department of pathology of 

 the Philippine Medical School, I received blood samples from a number 

 of Filipinos shortly after death, in whom the post-mortem findings and 

 the bacteriologic examination of the faeces established the diagnosis of 

 cholera. The blood was taken from the large veins of the heart before 

 performing the autopsy and samples of from 200 to 250 cubic centimeters 

 were secured without trouble. The results of my analyses are recorded 

 in the following tables. I also append those of Schmidt and, for 

 comparison, some recent ones of normal blood. 



According to the analyses of Biernacki, 5 Erben, and Dennstedt and 

 Rumpf, 7 the following values can be regarded as the normal, average 

 composition of human blood. 



'Ztschr. klin. Med. (1894), 24, 460. 



"IUd. (1900), 40, 266-293. 



7 Ztschr. physiol. Chem. (1904), 41, 42-54. 



