THE ELIMINATION OF IRON AND ITS DISTRIBUTION IN THE LIVER AND SPLEEN IN EXPERIMENTAL ANEMIA. II

In the continuous blood destruction, essentially a chronic experimental anemia, caused by injecting the dog with Trypanosoma equiperdum, no increased elimination of iron is observed in the feces. The storage of iron in the liver and spleen under these experimental conditions is somewhat greater in amount, but of the same general character as in transient experimental anemia. Splenectomy before or after infection, i.e. the development of anemia, influences neither the elimination of iron in the feces nor its storage in the liver. The retardation of the course of the trypanosome infection and thus the production of a more chronic anemia by treatment with a trypanocide, arsenobenzol, likewise does not affect iron storage. These experiments have therefore failed to reproduce the changes in iron metabolism seen in certain of the chronic hemolytic anemias of man. In the presence of a bile duct-ureter fistula the iroh content of the mixture of urine and bile is not appreciably greater than that of the urine alone. In the dog, therefore, the elimination of iron in the the bile would not appear to be an important factor. On the other hand, when bile is excluded from the intestine an unusual storage of iron occurs in the spleen. For this no explanation is offered.