Blood Regeneration in Severe Anemia—Influence of Inorganic Ash of Liver,Kidney and Apricots.

Abstract

In some of the early anemia work at the University of California Robscheit-Robbins and Whipple observed an unusually favorable reaction to the feeding of dried peaches in short term anemia experiments in dogs. Repitition of this apricot and peach diet in severe anemia in dogs shows clearly that the original observations were correct. 1 The addition of 200 gm. of this cooked fruit to the daily standard diet may cause an average output of 40 to 45 gm. hemoglobin per 2-week period over and above the standard control period. All of this work indicated clearly that the inorganic elements of this fruit should be tested. We have recently reported^2,3 experiments dealing with various fractions of extracts of beef liver.

It is to be kept clearly in mind that our experiments deal with the simplest form of anemia, due to withdrawal of blood. One must be cautious in comparing simple anemias of this sort with fasting or nutritional anemias. Different animals may react quite differently to various diets—for example, the herbivora may utilize the chlorophyll of green vegetables to build hemoglobin whereas dogs cannot do so. 4 We are greatly interested in a recent preliminary report of Waddell, Elvehjem, Steenbock and Hart 5 which indicates that the ash of beef liver has a favorable effect upon certain nutritional anemia of rats. It is probable that some differences will come out as we learn more about this nutritional anemia as compared with simple anemia due to hemorrhage.

The various samples of inorganic ash were prepared in the following manner: Fresh beef liver, pig kidney, or dried apricots are weighed and placed in a large fire brick container. Free flames from several blow-torches are played on this material until it is redwed to a black carbon mass.,4t this point a stream of oxygen is directed into the hot material burning it down to a white, gray, or bluish brown, glassy ash.