1 14 Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. 



This patient had received a large salt infusion during the convul- 

 sive period. In two other fatal cases hemolysis was found only in 

 emulsions made from the spleen, but not in the hepatic, portal, or 

 uterine veins, or in the placenta. In a fourth fatal case with 

 bloody urine and extensive hemorrhages in the brain, liver, and 

 peritoneal cavity, 300 c.c. of blood were drawn from the arm dur- 

 ing life. The serum was entirely unstained by hemoglobin. 



The blood of the placenta mixed with fetal blood, or with 

 extracts in salt solution of liver and kidney, failed to hemolyze. 



The observations indicate that the eclamptic toxin is not a 

 hemolytic agent derived from the placenta, and that hemolysis is 

 not necessarily associated with the lesions of the viscera. Semb's 

 observations in which he demonstrates visceral lesions strongly 

 resembling those of a hemolytic serum, cannot be accepted as 

 evidence of a specific eclamptic toxin. Histological study of the 

 liver of eclampsia indicates that the characteristic lesions consist in 

 fibrin thrombi and not in agglutination and hemolysis of red cells, 

 and that when hemolysis occurs it results from the products of 

 degeneration and necrosis of endothelial and hepatic cells. It is 

 therefore probably an entirely secondary factor in the disease. 



81 (224) 



Glycocoll nitrogen in the metabolism of the dog. 



By J. R. MURLIN. 



[From the Physiological Laboratory of the New York University and 

 Bellevue Hospital Medical College^ 



While attempting to explain the behavior of gelatin in metabo- 

 lism it occurred to the writer that much significance might be 

 attributed to its high content of glycocoll. It is well known that 

 the nitrogen of gelatin is not ordinarily retained in the body but 

 appears quantitatively in the urine, chiefly as urea. But when fed 

 with meat and abundance of carbohydrate it is possible to establish 

 nitrogen equilibrium near the fasting level, if two-thirds of the 

 total quantity of nitrogen fed is present in proteid-free gelatin 

 and only one-third present in the meat. 1 Would glycocoll, if fed in 

 the same way, behave as does gelatin ? 



1 Murlin : This journal, 1905, ii, p. 38. 



