Experimental Hemochromatosis

In pernicious anemia and hemochromatosis an iron-containing pigment, hemosiderin, ordinarily derived from hemoglobin, is deposited in organs free from such pigment in most conditions that involve blood destruction. When sudden hemolysis takes place in a previously healthy human being, as after cutaneous burns or the action of a "blood poison," hemosiderin granules appear in the spleen, the red marrow, and sometimes in certain lymph nodes, but as a rule in these organs only. A similar localization of the pigment is found in most diseases accompanied by a destruction of red cells,--acute malaria, for example; and it is regularly encountered in animals submitted to experiments or infections which, like trypanosomiasis, involve a breaking down of blood. Far different is the siderosis of pernicious anemia and hemochromatosis. The spleen and bone marrow are still pigmented, but to only a slight degree as compared with some of the other organs. In pernicious anemia most of the hemosiderin is found in the liver and much in the kidneys. In hemochromatosis the liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart, abdominal lymph nodes, and many other organs are heavily loaded with the pigment. What is the cause for the difference thus outlined? Has the hemosiderin in hemochromatosis another source than the blood? These and other important questions suggest themselves. And numerous attempts to answer them through an experimental production of the significant lesions have already been made. Stadelmann, 1 Hunter," Biondi, 3 and others obtained a siderosis of the liver parenchyma as the