Historical review: concept of acid-base balance in medicine.

This paper attempts to illustrate historically how important developments in the comparatively new field of physical chemistry during the second half of the 19th century made possible the understanding of ions and acid-base phenomena in clinical and laboratory medicine. Primarily based upon the revolutionary concept of ionization by Svante Arrhenius, it was the studies of two Americans, Lawrence Joseph Henderson and Donald Dexter van Slyke, during the first two decades of the 20th century that resulted in the elucidation and clinical laboratory evaluation of two major diseases, diabetes and nephritis, and the resulting recognition of the phenomena of acidosis and alkalosis.