Abstract
Conclusion
The need of a simple clinical measure of cyanosis has long been felt, not only by surgeons and anaesthetists, but by physicians who have under their care pulmonary and cardiac cases.
It is contended that sub-oxydation or oxygen unsaturation of the total circulating blood is abnormal and imperils the life of the patient.
There appears to be a large unexplored field in the physiological limits of oxygen unsaturation. This field includes obstetrics.
By simple laboratory methods the two extremes of complete cyanosis and complete oxygenation have been secured.
The exact color value of these extremes has been permanently recorded by the help of the Munsell system of color notation.
Intermediate gradations of these extremes have been secured by mechanical means, so that a scale is available.
The resulting scale, the haemoxometer (oxyhaemoglobinometer) is a positive basic measure of the oxyhaemoglobin content of the blood under observation. The opacity presented by the finger nail and mucous membrane has been studied and closely duplicated.
The haemoxometer is offered as a simple clinical measure of oxygen unsaturation (cyanosis), basically correct, in practice, approximate.
In submitting this original device, the writer is convinced that it has a sphere of usefulness scarcely second to that of the hzmoglobinometer.
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