Abstract
IN addition to oxyhæmoglobin, methæmoglobin has been recorded in the plasma of blackwater fever patients by Arkwright and Lepper1, Yorke, Murgatroyd and Owen2, Ross3 and Fairley and Bromfield4. In 1934 the latter observers5 described an unnamed pigment closely allied to methæmoglobin in a case of blackwater fever. Spectroscopically it resembled methæmoglobin, but did not reduce with Stokes's reagent or ammonium sulphide. It produced a chocolate-coloured blood, a brown-coloured plasma, was absent from washed corpuscles and failed to appear in the urine. Specimens of plasma were sent to Prof. D. Keilin, who suggested that the pigment originated as some modification of methæmoglobin in which the globin portion of the molecule had undergone an irreversible change. The following year the same pigment was again encountered in this disease, and recently R. J. Bromfield and I went to investigate this question at the Malaria Laboratory of the League of Nations, Salonika.
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Arkwright, J. A., and Lepper, E. H., J. Roy. Army Med. Corps, 30, 378 (1918).
Yorke, W., Murgatroyd, F. and Owen, D. U., Trans. Roy. Soc. Trop. Med. and Hyg., 23, 335 (1930).
Ross, G. R., ” Researches on Blackwater Fever”, The London School of Hyg. and Trop. Med., Mem. Series, No. 6, 1–262 (1932).
Fairley, N. H., and Bromfleld, R. J., Trans. Roy. Soc. Trop. Med. and Hyg., 28, 141 (1934).
Fairley, N. H., and Bromfield, R. J., Trans. Roy. Soc. Trop. Med. and Hyg., 28, 307 (1934).
Hoppe-Seyler, F., Centr. Med. Wissensch., 2, 817 (1864).
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FAIRLEY, N. A New Blood Pigment: Pseudo-Methæmoglobin. Nature 139, 588 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139588a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139588a0
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