The Spleen and Anaemia: Experimental and Clinical Studies

Abstract

IN this pleasant volume on the results of removing trie spleen Prof. Pearce has put together the various experimental studies carried out with a number of collaborators in the department of research medicine of the University of Pennsylvania during the past five or six years. Most of the data have been already published in periodicals, but it is convenient to Have them in a revised and connected form and to read the author's general discussion of his results taken as a whole. Removal of the spleen in dogs leads to (1) an anaemia of moderate severity, lasting in all from two to six months; (2) an increased resistance of the red-blood corpuscles to destruction by hypotonic salt solution, saponin, and other haemolytic agents; (3) a diminisBed susceptibility to haemoglobinuria and jaundice induced by the injection of haemolytic serum. The mere absence of spleen is never fatal, never, indeed, induces anything that could be called severe illness, and in six or twelve months the animals are normal again, except, perhaps, in respect of the resistance of their red corpuscles to laking. A number of paths have been pursued in search of some general explanation of these phenomena, and it must have been disappointing“to find them mostly fruitless.

The Spleen and Anaemia: Experimental and Clinical Studies.

By Prof. R. M. Pearce, with the assistance of Dr. E. B. Krumbhaar and Prof. C. H. Frazier. Pp. x + 419. (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1918.) Price 21s. net.