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If the oxygen and hemoglobin formed a strong instead of a weak chemical union, could the hemoglobin then act as an oxygen carrier? Why? What habits of living favor the development of corpuscles in the blood? Why will keeping the skin clean and active improve the quality of one’s blood?
As one of our keenest observers and most philosophic thinkers expressed it a few months ago: "I fear that certain physicians on their rounds are most careful to take with them their stethoscope, their thermometer, their hemoglobin papers, their sphygmomanometer, but leave their eyes and their brains at home."
In the form of hemoglobin this element is the chief agent in carrying oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body. In the manufacture of foods, much of the iron is lost. For instance, whole wheat flour contains about ten times as much iron as does the white flour. Too little iron causes, among other ills, anemia, and if the iron is very low, chlorosis or the green sickness may ensue.
"The method I employed was to take a little of the blood and add some oxalate of ammonium to it, then shake it up thoroughly with ether to free the hemoglobin from the corpuscles. I then separated the ether carefully from the rest of the blood mixture and put a few drops of it on a slide, covered them with a cover slip and sealed the edges with balsam.
The oxygen pressure at the lungs, which amounts to nearly three pounds to the square inch, easily causes the oxygen and the hemoglobin to unite, while the almost complete absence of any oxygen pressure at the tissues, permits their separation.
They take up oxygen at the lungs and release it at the cells in the different tissues. The performance of this function depends upon the hemoglobin. *Hemoglobin.*—This substance has the remarkable property of forming, under certain conditions, a weak chemical union with oxygen and, when the conditions are reversed, of separating from it.
In us, the oxygen is carried to the tissues, and the carbon dioxide carried away by an iron compound, hemoglobin, but in many animals of Earth, the same function is performed by a copper compound, hemocyanin, which is an intense blue. I am sure that that is the explanation for these strange people. By the way, did you notice their hands?" "Yes, I had.
Hemoglobin, such as in our blood, and hemocyanin, like that in the blue blood of the Venerians, are practically unique in that respect. For hydrogen absorption, I imagine the blood of these creatures contains a fair proportion of some highly saturated compound, which readily takes on the element, and gives it up later. "But we can kick this around some more in the lab."
At the lungs the oxygen and the hemoglobin form a weak chemical compound that breaks up and liberates the oxygen when it reaches the capillaries in the tissues.
"It wouldn't do any good to make the ship non-ferrous unless you could so change our blood chemistry that we could get along without hemoglobin, and that would be quite a feat," Cleveland agreed. "Then, too, our most vital electrical machinery is built around iron cores. No, we'll have to develop a screen for those forces screens, rather, so powerful that they can't drive anything through them."
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