The care of the body / by R.S. Woodworth.

  • Woodworth, Robert Sessions, 1869-1962
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The care of the body / by R.S. Woodworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    or any active cell, uses up oxygen, and has, as it were, a hunger for more, or an attraction for it; and, though the hemoglobin has sufficient at- traction for oxygen to take it from the air in the lungs, it has not enough to hold it against the greater attraction of the tissues. The red corpuscles, with their hemoglobin, are therefore oxygen-carriers, and it is through them that the tissues receive their supply of this essential element. It was stated that the number of red corpuscles is 5,000,000 per cubic millimeter; but this num- ber varies considerably. It averages 10 per cent less in women, perhaps in relation to their less vigorous muscular activity—for it is the muscles, more than other organs, that require oxygen. Muscular exercise, and “going into training,” increases the number of red corpuscles; and the number is greatly increased by going into the high mountains, where the air is thin, and where, therefore, the carrying of oxygen from the lungs to the other organs is a more difficult task. The condition called anemia, or, literally, bloodlessness, is not a lack of the proper quantity of blood, but a deficiency in the number of red corpuscles and of their hemoglobin. The anemic person has a deficiency of oxygen-carriers, and, though he may