Development of knowledge of the blood as a chemical svstem has ” of late been rapid and successful. So much so in fact that there seems real danger that the approximately complete solution of one-half of a great problem may be mistaken for a solution of the whole problem: the problem of the regulation of the blood. It is probable that some investigators on this topic (l), (Z), (3) do not forget this limitation; but it is quite certain that others do in effect forget that the blood is a physiological fluid regulated by a living organism, and not merely a physicochemical system. It is true that any one sample of blood, and the gases with which it is equilibrated, consitute a physicochemical system. A large number of its factors, such as chloride, alkali, COZ, oxygen pressure, etc., are expressible in such dependence upon each other that the alteration of one, such as the oxygen pressure, shifts all of the others. In fact, once a system of this sort is postulated, such interdependence is vir-tually self-evident. The recent working out of its details affords a satisfactory approach to complete solution of the purely chemical aspects of the problem. All of the alterations of such a system are reversible under the influence merely of the conditions occurring in alternation as the blood passes through the lungs and tissues, and loses or gains oxygen and CO2 respectively (4). But not all blood is the same. For instance, the number of corpuscles and amount of hemoglobin is 25 or even 50 per cent greater in one blood than another, or even in a single person at one time (during life in the mountains) as compared with another time. CO2 and in these oxygen various pressure the other properties would not be the same bloods, but widely different. The diagrams of these At the same
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Yandell Henderson (1925) studied this question.