Observations on four hundred cases of anchylostomiasis / by F.M. Sandwith.

  • Sandwith, Fleming Mant, 1853-1918.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on four hundred cases of anchylostomiasis / by F.M. Sandwith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    while of the regaining 9, 5 aged from nineteen to twenty- five had their puberty considerably delayed. Examination of the blood.—I have notes of 173 cases in which the blood-corpuscles were counted on admission to hos- pital. In only three patients were the red corpuscles found to exceed 4,000,000, and even then the excess was extremely slight. Twenty-three per cent, numbered between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 to the cubic millimetre, 46'8 per cent, varied from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000, and 28‘3 per cent, had less than 2,000,000 red blood-corpuscles. The mininum recorded was 930,000 in a patient who afterwards did well. The average gain of red corpuscles during stay in hospital of these cases was 1,290,000, and could have been much more if it had been possible to keep the patients for a longer time. The least gain recorded in any one patient was 310,000, while ten patients gained over 2,000,000 during their stay. The youths seem to have the most recuperative power in this direction, and I recorded an increase of 2,,542,000 in a boy of eighteen years. Another boy, aged sixteen, during one month gained seven pounds in weight and 2,208,000 red corpuscles; while the Alexandria blacksmith in six weeks gained eleven pounds in weight, and raised the number of his red corpuscles from 1,054,000 to 3,875,000. It is right to mention that the corpuscles were counted by two house physicians under my guidance, but that though the rule was to take the average of ten squares it was not always possible to take the average of more than six squares in counting by the method of Thoma-Zeiss. The average number of ivhite corpuscles upon admission was 10,360, and the average increase in hospital was 5370. Gowers’ hxmoglobinometer showed an average of 26 per cent, upon admission, the numbers varying from 10 to 54 per cent, of haemoglobin. The increase of haemoglobin in hospital ranged from 22 to 32 per cent., and probably continued when the men became out-patients. As a further blood test, Dr. Kaufmann examined twenty typical cases for me to determine the volume of the red cor- puscles.1 Healthy men were found to have from 45 to 50 1 Schulmeister’s centrifugal top machine was used with Professor Gaertner’s