The Distribution of Sodium, Potassium, Calcium, and Magnesium between the Corpuscles and Serum of Human Blood

A knowledge of the concentration of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium in the blood is necessary in connection with a variety of problems. Methods hitherto used for the quantitative determination of these elements in blood have required large amounts of material even for a single determination and have been, in most cases, difficult to carry out. These facts have tended to discourage such studies, particularly with human blood. The earliest recorded figuresfor the concentration of cations and anions in human blood, corpuscles, and serum, are those reported by Schmidt (1) in 1850. Wanach (2) in 1888 estimated the sodium and potassium in the blood corpuscles and serum of eight adults. Some years before this Bunge (3), a pupil of Schmidt, reported a number of complete analyses of the ash of the blood corpuscles and serum of several animals. Abderhalden (4) later published the results of a similar study on a larger series of animals. No studies on the distribut,ion of cations between the corpuscles and serum of normal human blood have appeared since those of Wanach.’ The introduction of methods for the quantitative determination of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium with small amounts of serum and whole blood (5 to 9) has made such studies on human