STUDIES OF GAS AND ELECTROLYTE EQUILIBRIA IN BLOOD

Abstract

The quantitative expressionof the water and electrolyte distribution in the blood, and of the shifts in the distribution during respiration and other physiological changes, rests in large part on the relationship between hydrion concentration and the amounts of base bound by oxygenated and reduced hemoglobin (Van Slyke, Wu, and McLean (1)).It consequently appears desirable to determine with accuracy these relationships and to construct the curves and equations expressing them.The present paper presents experimental and theoretical data directed to this end.Christiansen, Douglas, and Haldane in 1914 (2) discovered that blood has a higher COz-absorbing capacity in the reduced than in the oxygenated form, and pointed out the manner in which this property enables the blood to absorb in the tissues and expel in the lungs the observed amounts of COz with the observed small changes in CO2 tension.The results of Christiansen, Douglas, and Haldane were confirmed by Joffe and Poulton (3), by Parsons (4), and by Doisy, Briggs, Eaton, and Chambers (5).L. J. Henderson (6) showed that the phenomena could be explained according to the law of mass action by assuming that combination of hemoglobin with a molecule of oxygen increases the acidity of a monovalent acid group in the hemoglobin molecule.Such increase in acid strength * The results in this paper were presented at the meeting of the American