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388 THE LIVER.
of dissolved haemoglobin, in which process the iron combinations derived
from the blood-pigments in other organs, such as the spleen and marrow,
also seem to take part. 1
A destruction of blood-pigments, with a splitting
off of compounds rich in iron, seems to take place in the liver in the for-
mation of the bile-pigments. Even in invertebrates, which have no
haemoglobin, the so-called liver is rich in iron, from which Dastre and
Floresco 2
conclude that the quantity of iron in the liver of inverte-
brates is entirely independent of the decomposition of the blood-pigment,
and in vertebrates it is in part so. According to these authors the liver
has, on account of the quantity of iron, a specially important oxidizing
function, which they call the " fonction martiale " of the liver.
The richness in iron of the liver of new-born animals is of special
interest—a condition which was shown by the analyses of St. Zaleski,
but was especially studied by Kruger and Meyer. In oxen and cows
they found 0.246-0.276 p. m. iron (calculated on the dry substance),
and in the cow-foetus about ten times as much. The liver-cells of a calf
a week old contain about seven times as much iron as the adult animal;
the quantity decreases in the first four weeks of life, when it reaches
about the same amount as in the adult. Lapicque 3 also found that in
rabbits the quantity of iron in the liver steadily diminishes from the
eighth day to three months after birth, namely, from 10 to 0.4 p. m.,
calculated on the dry substance. " The fcetal liver-cells bring an abun-
dance of iron in the world to be used up, within a certain time, for a pur-
pose not well known." A part of the iron exists as phosphate, but the
greater part is in combination in the ferruginous protein bodies (St.
Zaleski).
The quantity of calcium oxide in the fresh, moist liver of the horse,
ox, and pig, according to Toyonaga, amounts to 0.148-0.193 p. m., or
more than the human liver (0.101 p. m. according to Magnus-Levy).
The amount of magnesium oxide was remarkably high, namely, 0.168,
0.198 and 0.158 p. m., in the livers of the horse, ox, and pig, respectively,
but considerably less than the human liver in which Magnus-Levy found
0.292 p. m. Kruger 4
found the quantity of calcium in the livers of
adult cattle and of calves to be respectively 0.71 p. m. and 1.23 p. m.
of the dried substance. In the foetus of the cow it is lower than in calves.
During pregnancy the iron and calcium in the foetus are antagonistic;
1
See Lapicque, Compt. Rend., 124, and Schurig, Arch. f. exp. Path. u. Pharm., 41.
2
Arcb.de Physiol. (5), 10.
4 St. Zaleski, 1. c; Kruger and collaborators, Zeitschr. f. Biologie, 27; Lapicque,
Maly’fi Jahresber., 20.
4
Kruger, Zeitschr. f. Biologie, 31; Toyonaga, Bull, of the College of Agriculture,
Tokio, 6; A. Magnus-Levy, Bioch. Zeitschr., 24.
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