Studies in Anaemia. II

Abstract

MOST investigators of anaemia, in making observations on such points as basal metabolism, circulation rate and blood reaction, and also on such questions as the influence of iron, etc., on blood regeneration, have confined themselves to acute experimental anaemia produced by bleeding.Such an anaemia is at best a transitory phenomenon, the blood soon being regenerated either from a reserve of blood forming materials or from constituents of the diet.The production of a sub-acute anaemia by bleeding and feeding as described in Part I of this paper [1923] is a process so tedious and laborious that before proceeding further it seemed desirable to search for some easier method of producing a more permanent anaemia, and the expedient of breeding from females which had been kept on a diet poor in iron (bread and milk only) from the age of puberty till ten months was adopted.These rats showed practically no anaemia themselves, their colour index being about 052 as against the normal 056.Healthy males were used for breeding and the process was looked upon as a case where deficiency of some chemical substance in the mother caused a deficiency of the same substance in more marked degree in her offspring.This was the course adopted by M. B. Schmidt in 1912.Schmidt [1912] found that if a diet of rice and milk were continued in growing mice they gradually became anaemic and were stunted in their growth.The offspring of such mice were studied through several generations throughout which the feeding was continuously " iron-free."If now iron were given to one of a litter of such stunted anaemic mice it quickly outgrew the others and acquired a high percentage of haemoglobin and a nearly normal blood count.Attention may also be drawn to the work of Brinckmann [1921], who showed that after feeding young guinea-pigs on iron-poor food anaemia of chlorotic type ensues.In view of our more intimate knowledge of the rat and his greater range of usefulness in experimental procedure it seemed desirable to repeat the experiments with these animals and to institute a comparison between the index M. 85 7 70 *55 M.