Chapter XL

ON BLOOD AS AN ARTICLE OF FOOD CONTAINING IRON AND ANIMAL
EXTRACTS—SAUSAGES AND BLOOD PUDDINGS.

IRON is a most important element of our blood, the lack of which, as in chlorosis and various anæmic conditions, may produce very serious symptoms. To replace this deficiency iron is introduced into our system, and this can be done in two ways: either by the natural way, i.e., by food which contains iron, or artificially, by means of drugs which contain iron. It is the opinion of Bunge that iron, given in drugs, especially as inorganic iron, is not so readily absorbed and assimilated as organic iron, i.e., iron as it occurs in various articles of food, and especially in the blood.

Therefore an effort has been made with more or less success by manufacturing chemists to make preparations of iron obtained from the blood, and Professor Bunge[299] has experimented on animals by using iron containing nuclein, separated from the yolk of eggs; and in Professor Kossel’s laboratory such a preparation has been made from the eggs of the carp. It was found that these preparations were perfectly absorbed and assimilated.

Footnote 299:

Bunge: Lehrbuch der Physiologie, Berlin, 1907.

Professor Bunge, and also his pupils Abderhalden and Haüsermann, found that all animals which received food containing but little iron, became anæmic, e.g., young rabbits fed only on milk, which, as above mentioned, is very poor in iron. Later food was given that contained iron (as green vegetables, cabbage, herbs, etc.; or meat, yolks of eggs, and fruit), and soon afterward the iron contents of their blood was found to be increased. Even if we are not anæmic or chlorotic, it is necessary to take a certain amount of iron, preferably organic iron, into our systems.

Anæmia of slight degree is very frequent in women, especially after degeneration of the ovaries, as after the menopause. As we have already mentioned, the ovaries influence in a remarkable way the condition of the blood. In the adult the bone marrow is the chief seat of formation for the red blood corpuscles; but the bone marrow, and indeed the whole skeleton, as we have shown in the second chapter of this book, is under the control of the ovaries and of the thyroid. As these organs are, as a rule, degenerated in old age, anæmia must result, and indeed Prof. Naunyn[300] says: “Old people are anæmic.” Geist has already emphasized the diminution in the quantity of the blood in old age. That blood formation is deficient in old age is demonstrated by Besançon and Labbé, who found the activity of the bone marrow diminished in old age, and by Grawitz,[301] who found that bone marrow underwent important changes in old age, being transformed into a jelly-like substance. According to Grawitz, iron—and he always prefers to prescribe an organic rather than an inorganic iron preparation—is less efficacious in old age. We attribute this to the degeneration of the blood-forming organs, through whose intermediary action iron produces its effect. If, however, these organs are not entirely degenerated, but only partially so, as in the first few years following the menopause—in women until the end of the fifties—we can obtain better results; and indeed after giving such women iron we may observe that they look better, and often fresher (see, also,