Volume 4, Slice 1 Part 28 (2/2)
It is often very difficult, especially in ”secondary” anaemias, to say which of the above processes is mainly at work. In acute anaemias, such as those a.s.sociated with septicaemia, there is no doubt that blood destruction plays the princ.i.p.al part. But if the cause of anaemia is a chronic one, a gastric cancer, for instance, though there may possibly be an increased amount of destruction of corpuscles in some cases, and though there is often loss by haemorrhage, the cancer interferes with nutrition, the blood is impoverished and does not nourish the erythroblasts in the marrow sufficiently, and the new corpuscles which are turned out are few and poor in haemoglobin. In chronic anaemias, regeneration always goes on side by side with destruction, and it is important to remember that the state of the blood in these conditions gives the measure, not of the amount of destruction which is taking place so much as of the amount of regeneration of which the organism is capable. The evidence of destruction has often to be sought for in other organs, or in secretions or excretions.
Of the so-called primary anaemias the most common is _chlorosis_, an anaemia which occurs only in the female s.e.x, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five as a rule. Its symptoms are those caused by a diminution of haemoglobin, and though it is never directly fatal, and is extremely amenable to treatment with iron preparations, its subjects very frequently suffer from relapses at varying intervals after the first attack. Its causation is probably complex. Bad hygienic conditions, over-fatigue, want of proper food, especially of the iron-containing proteids of meat, the strain put upon the blood and blood-forming organs by the accession of p.u.b.erty and the occurrence of menstruation, all probably play a part in it. It has also been suggested that internal secretions may be concerned in stimulating the bone-marrow, and that in the female s.e.x in particular the genital organs may act in this way.
Imperfect a.s.sumption of function by these organs at p.u.b.erty, caused perhaps by some of the above-mentioned conditions, might lead to sluggishness in the bone-marrow, and to the supply to the blood of the poorly-formed corpuscles deficient in haemoglobin which are characteristic of the disease. Chlorosis is the type of anaemias from imperfect blood-formation. Lorrain Smith has produced evidence to show that the total amount of haemoglobin in the body is not diminished in this disease, but that the blood-plasma is greatly increased in amount, so that the haemoglobin is diluted and the amount in each blood-unit greatly lessened.
_Pernicious anaemia_ is a rarer disease than chlorosis, occurs usually later in life, and is distributed nearly equally between the two s.e.xes.
But it is of great importance because of its almost uniformly fatal termination, though its downward course is generally broken by temporary improvement on one or more occasions. The symptoms are those of a progressive anaemia, in which gastro-intestinal disturbance usually plays a large part, and nervous symptoms are common, and they become at last much more severe than those of any secondary anaemia. The patient may die in the first attack, but more usually, when things seem to be at their worst, improvement sets in, either spontaneously or as the result of treatment, and the patient slowly regains apparent health. This remission may be followed by a relapse, that again by a remission, and so on, but as a rule the disease is fatal within, at the outside, two or three years.
The prime cause of the disease is not known. It seems probable indeed that the causal factors are numerous. Severe malarial infection, syphilis, pregnancy, chronic gastro-intestinal disease, chronic gas-poisoning, are all, in different cases, known to have been causally a.s.sociated with it, and it is probable that a congenital weakness of the bone-marrow has often to do with its production, as in many cases a family or hereditary history of the disease can be obtained. The condition is now regarded as a chronic toxaemia, partly because of the clinical symptoms and pathological appearances, partly because a.n.a.logous conditions can be produced experimentally by such poisons as saponin and toluylendiamin, and partly because of the facts of _bothriocephalus_ anaemia. The site of production of the toxin, or toxins, for it is possible that several may have the same effect on the blood, is possibly not always the same, but must often be the alimentary ca.n.a.l, as _bothriocephalus_ anaemia proves. Not all persons affected with this intestinal tapeworm contract the disease, but only those in whose intestines the worm is dead and decomposing or sometimes only ”sick.”
The expulsion of the worm puts an end to the absorption of the toxin and the patients recover. No adequate explanation of the formation of the toxin in the immense majority of the cases, in which there is no tapeworm, has yet been given. It is certain that no organism as yet known is concerned.
This toxaemia affects the marrow and through it the blood, the gastro-intestinal apparatus and the nervous system, especially the spinal cord, in different proportions in different cases. The effect upon the marrow is to alter the type of red corpuscle formation, causing a reversion to the embryonic condition, in which the nucleated red corpuscles are large (megaloblasts), and the corpuscles in the blood formed from them are also large, are apparently ill suited to the needs of the adult, and easily break down, as the deposits of iron in the liver, spleen, kidneys and marrow prove. Whether this reversion is due to an exhaustion of the normal process or to an inhibition of it is not definitely known. The result is that the circulating red corpuscles are enormously diminished; it is usual to find 1,000,000 or less in the cubic millimetre instead of the normal 5,000,000. Though the haemoglobin is of course absolutely diminished, it is always, in severe cases, present in relatively higher percentage than the red corpuscles, because the average red corpuscle is larger and contains more haemoglobin than the normal. The large nucleated red corpuscles (megaloblasts) with which the marrow is crowded, often appear in the blood.
Other anaemias, such as those known as _lymphadenoma_, or Hodgkin's disease, _splenic anaemia_, _chloroma_, _leucanaemia_ and the _anaemia pseudo-leucaemica_ of children, need not be described here, as they are either rare or their occurrence or nature is still too much under discussion.
Leucocytosis.
The number and nature of the leucocytes in the blood bears no constant or necessary relation to the number or condition of the red corpuscles, and their variations depend on entirely different conditions. The number in the cubic millimetre is usually about 7000, but may vary in health from 5000 to 10,000. A diminution in their number is known as _leucopenia_, and is found in starvation, in some infective diseases, as for example in typhoid fever, in malaria and Malta fever, and in pernicious anaemia. An increase is very much more frequent, and is known as _leucocytosis_, though in this term is usually connoted a relative increase in the proportion of the polymorphonuclear neutrophile leucocytes. Leucocytosis occurs under a great variety of conditions, normally to a slight extent during digestion, during pregnancy, and after violent exercise, and abnormally after haemorrhage, in the course of inflammations and many infective diseases, in malignant disease, in such toxic states as uraemia, and after the ingestion of nuclein and other substances. It does not occur in some infective diseases, the most important of which are typhoid fever, malaria, influenza, measles and uncomplicated tuberculosis. In all cases where it is sufficiently severe and long continued, the reserve s.p.a.ce in the bone-marrow is filled up by the active proliferation of the leucocytes normally found there, and is used as a nursery for the leucocytes required in the blood. In many cases leucocytosis is known to be a.s.sociated with the defence of the organism from injurious influences, and its amount depends on the relation between the severity of the attack and the power of resistance.
There may be an increase in the proportions present in the blood of lymphocytes (_lymphocytosis_), and of eosinophile cells (_eosinophilia_). This latter change is a.s.sociated specially with some forms of asthma, with certain skin diseases, and with the presence of animal parasites in the body, such as ankylostoma and filaria.
Leucaemia.
The disease in which the number of leucocytes in the blood is greatest is _leucocythaemia_ or leucaemia. There are two main forms of this disease, in both of which there are anaemia, enlargement of the spleen and lymphatic glands, or of either of them, leucocytic hypertrophy of the bone-marrow, and deposits of leucocytes in the liver, kidney and other organs. The difference lies in the kind of leucocytes present in excess in the blood, blood-forming organs and deposits in the tissues.
In the one form these are lymphocytes, which are found in health mainly in the marrow, the blood itself, the lymph glands and in the lymphatic tissue round the alimentary ca.n.a.l; in the other they are the kinds of leucocytes normally found in the bone-marrow-myelocytes, neutrophile, basophile and eosinophile, and polymorphonuclear cells, also neutrophile, basophile and eosinophile. The clinical course of the two forms may differ. The first, known as lymphatic leucaemia or _lymphaemia_, may be acute, and prove fatal in a few weeks or even days with rapidly advancing anaemia, or may be chronic and last for one or two years or longer. The second, known as spleno-myelogenous leucaemia or _myelaemia_, is almost always chronic, and may last for several years. Recovery does not take place, though remissions may occur. The use of the X-rays has been found to influence the course of this disease very favourably. The most recent view of the pathology of the disease is that it is due to an overgrowth of the bone-marrow leucocytes, a.n.a.logous in some respects to tumour growth and caused by the removal of some controlling mechanism rather than by stimulation. The anaemia accompanying the disease is due partly to the leucocyte overgrowth, which takes up the s.p.a.ce in the marrow belonging of right to red corpuscle formation and interferes with it. (G. L. G.)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The suffix _-phile_, Greek [Greek: philein], to love, prefer, is in scientific terminology frequently applied to substances that exhibit such preference for particular stains or reagents, the names of which form the first part of the word.
BLOOD-LETTING. There are certain morbid conditions when a patient may obtain marked relief from the abstraction of a certain amount of blood, from three or four ounces up to twenty or even thirty in extreme cases.
This may be effected by venesection, or the application of leeches, or more rarely by cupping (q.v.). Unfortunately, in years gone by, blood-letting was used to such excess, as a cure for almost every known disease, that public opinion is now extremely opposed to it. In certain pathological conditions, however, it brings relief and saves life when no other means would act with sufficient promptness to take its place.
Venesection, in which the blood is usually withdrawn from the median-basilic vein of the arm, has the disadvantage that it can only be performed by the medical man, and that the patient's friends are generally very much opposed to the idea. But the public are not nearly so prejudiced against the use of leeches; and as the nurse in charge can be instructed to use these if occasion arises, this is the form of blood-letting usually practised to-day. From one to twelve leeches are applied at the time, the average leech withdrawing some two drachms of blood. Should this prove insufficient, as much again can be abstracted by the immediate application of hot fomentations to the wounds. They should always be applied over some bony prominence, that pressure may be effectively used to stop the haemorrhage afterwards. They should never be placed over superficial veins, or where there is much loose subcutaneous tissue. If, as is often the case, there is any difficulty in making them bite, the skin should be p.r.i.c.ked at the desired spot with the point of a sterilized needle, and the leech will then attach itself without further trouble. Also they must be left to fall off of their own accord, the nurse never dragging them forcibly off. If cold and pressure fail to stop the subsequent haemorrhage, a little powdered alum or other styptic may be inserted in the wound. The following are the main indications for their use, though in some cases they are better replaced by venesection, (1) For stagnation of blood on the right side of the heart with constant dyspnoea, cyanosis, &c. In acute lung disease, the sudden obstruction to the pa.s.sage of blood through the lungs throws such an increased strain on the right ventricle that it may dilate to the verge of paralysis; but by lessening the total volume of blood, the heart's work is lightened for a time, and the danger at the moment tided over. This is a condition frequently met with in the early stages of acute pneumonia, pleurisy and bronchitis, when the obstruction is in the lungs, the heart being normal. But the same result is also met with as a result of failure of compensation with back pressure in certain forms of heart disease (q.v.). (2) To lower arterial tension. In the early stages of cerebral haemorrhage (before coma has supervened), when the heart is working vigorously and the tension of the pulse is high, a timely venesection may lead to arrest of the haemorrhage by lowering the blood pressure and so giving the blood in the ruptured vessel an opportunity to coagulate. (3) In various convulsive attacks, as in acute uraemia.
BLOOD-MONEY, colloquially, the reward for betraying a criminal to justice. More strictly it is used of the money-penalty paid in old days by a murderer to the kinsfolk of his victim. These fines completely protected the offender from the vengeance of the injured family. The system was common among the Scandinavian and Teutonic races previous to the introduction of Christianity, and a scale of payments, graduated according to the heinousness of the crime, was fixed by laws, which further settled who could exact the blood-money, and who were ent.i.tled to share it. Homicide was not the only crime thus expiable: blood-money could be exacted for all crimes of violence. Some acts, such as killing any one in a church or while asleep, or within the precincts of the royal palace, were ”bot-less”; and the death penalty was inflicted. Such a criminal was outlawed, and his enemies could kill him wherever they found him.
BLOODSTONE, the popular name of the mineral heliotrope, which is a variety of dark green chalcedony or plasma, with bright red spots, splashes and streaks. The green colour is due to a chloritic mineral; the red to haemat.i.te. Some coa.r.s.e kinds are opaque, resembling in this respect jasper, and some writers have sought to restrict the name ”bloodstone” to green jasper, with red markings, thus making heliotrope a translucent and bloodstone an opaque stone, but, though convenient, such a distinction is not generally recognized. A good deal of bloodstone comes from India, where it occurs in the Deccan traps, and is cut and polished at Cambay. The stone is used for seals, knife-handles and various trivial ornaments. Bloodstone is not very widely distributed, but is found in the basaltic rocks of the Isle of Rum in the west of Scotland, and in a few other localities. Haemat.i.te (Gr.
[Greek: aima], blood), or native peroxide of iron, is also sometimes called ”bloodstone.”
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