1909.] Presence of Carbon Monoxide in Normal Blood, etc. 519 



presence of any carbon monoxide ; and without denying the conclusions of 

 Desgrez and Nicloux, stated in a paper published in 1906,* that " we were 

 unable to accept the view that the combustible gas appearing during 

 , chloroform-narcosis is carbon monoxide, a product of the decomposition 

 of chloroform within the organism." This led Prof. Nicloux, in his work 

 ' Les Anesthesiques Generaux,'f to make an attack on us and represent that 

 we had denied the accuracy of his results on the strength of a single experi- 

 ment by a spectroscopic method on a cat, whereas his experiments, he remarks, 

 were performed on dogs. In reality our observations were made by the 

 admittedly delicate method of Haldane, in which weak solutions of blood are 

 examined in long glass tubes. We were therefore led to examine the 

 conclusions of Desgrez and Nicloux in more detail. 



Is there any carbon monoxide in the. gases of the blood which can be detected 

 by passing the gases through solutions of oxy-hasmoglobin ? 



It will be seen from the table we have given that Desgrez and Nicloux state • 

 that normal blood contains 1*6 c.c. of carbon monoxide per litre of blood. In 

 that of anaesthetised animals they find amounts of 2 - 6 c.c, 2 - 4 c.c, and 

 6 - 9 c.c. On the assumption that a litre of blood yields 600 c.c of mixed gases 

 at 0° and 760 mm., then the CO-conteht of normal blood is - 27 per cent., 

 which in chloroform anaesthesia may reach 1 - 15 per cent, by volume. The 

 actual quantities of gases these observers examined were about 15 c.c. 



We have minutely followed the directions contained in Haldane's papers^ 

 using mixtures of air and carbon monoxide. In the first experiments 500 c.c. 

 of air with 4 c.c. of carbon monoxide = 0'8 per cent. CO were used. 

 Measured volumes of this mixture were slowly bubbled through 1 : 100 

 solutions of freshly defibrinated cat's blood. The tubes so treated were 

 compared with control solutions, the two solutions being compared either 

 undiluted or equally diluted. Long columns of these solutions were 

 examined in long glass tubes, with the following results : — 



Volume of mixture 

 Series. of air + CO in c.c. 

 I 50 Hb + CO detected without dilution. 



II 



25 

 15 

 50 

 25 

 10 



Ditto. 

 Ditto. 

 Ditto. 

 Ditto. 

 Ditto. 



o 



Detected on dilution in long tubes. 



* ' Roy. Soc. Proe.,' B, vol. 78, 1906, p. 414. t Paris, 1908. 



% 'Journal of Physiology,' 1898, vol. 18, and ibidem, 1899, vol. 19. 



2 P 2 



