Blood : a study in general physiology / by Lawrence J. Henderson.

  • Lawrence Joseph Henderson
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Blood : a study in general physiology / by Lawrence J. Henderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    globin. Such complications arising in the study of this re¬ action are far from surprising, since there is reason to expect the true thermodynamic concentrations of the sub¬ stances concerned to vary with the conditions in a man¬ ner which escapes our present theoretical interpretations. We do know, moreover, that even in well-buffered hemo¬ globin solutions there occurs a change in hydrogen ion concentration accompanying change in oxygenation and this alone must be enough to produce a modification of the oxygen dissociation curves. The real physiological phenomenon is, moreover, a less simple physico-chemical process, and we may well, for the present purpose, confine ourselves to the facts. It is a source of regret that the chemical reaction between oxy¬ gen and hemoglobin cannot be more satisfactorily de¬ scribed, but we shall find that lack of success at this point causes little inconvenience in the study of physiological problems. In blood the conditions are approximately represented by Hill’s equation, JHbl - [HbO,] P 2 ' Here the value of n, always much larger than one, is a variable with a characteristic value for each specimen of blood. But even this relation is not entirely satisfactory, [Hb] for if values of the logarithm of the quantity [Hb02] be plotted against values of log p02 the result is not a straight line, as it should be if the approximation were sufficiently precise. It is, however, possible to express the conditions accurately by graphical methods, and, in order to begin a discussion of the facts, we may consider four curves which present the results of Green and Ferry62 and of Bock, Field and Adair.63 62 Unpublished work. 63 Bock, Field, and Adair, Journal of Biological Chemistry, LIX, 353 (1924).
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