Search

A patient with diabetes mellitus, in the wards of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, was observed to have a slight but definite cyanosis, for which no explanation could be found. A sample of venous blood from the arm revealed on analysis a marked increase in the oxygen unsaturation. The venous oxygen unsaturation of several other diabetic patients was found to be similarly though not so markedly increased, and it seemed worth while to study a small group of these patients in this respect. Accordingly, samples of anticubital venous blood were taken without stasis and under oil from thirty-four unselected diabetic patients, while the patients were at rest in bed, and the samples were analyzed by the method of Van Slyke and Stadie 1 for oxygen content and oxygen capacity, the oxygen unsaturation being calculated by subtracting the oxygen content from the oxygen capacity. Duplicate analyses were made in each case. It

The symptoms of tetany occur in a number of widely differing conditions, such as disease of the stomach, overdosage with sodium bicarbonate, prolonged hyperpnea, absence of the parathyroid glands, and in infants as a clinical entity often associated with rickets. Recently there has been a considerable amount of research into the physiologic phenomena underlying the increased irritability of nervous and muscular tissues in these conditions, and various theories as to its etiology have been advanced. The chief of these are that it is due to a disturbance of the acid-base equilibrium in the body and to a disturbance of the calcium metabolism. 1 Acid-base disturbance, consisting of an increase in the ratio of sodium bicarbonate to carbonic acid, is found in overdosage with sodium bicarbonate, in prolonged hyperpnea and in pyloric obstruction. The uniform hydrogen ion concentration of the body fluids is largely dependent on the maintenance of a constant