e particularly
given rise to this opposition, and thrown doubt on the diagnostic
importance of the eosinophil cells. These authors however base their
contradiction on false premises.
For Ehrlich did not speak of a rise of the percentage of the eosinophil
cells, but only of an increase in their absolute number. If in a case of
leukaemia only the normal percentage number of eosinophils is found, it
indicates, all the same, a great absolute increase; and Mueller and
Rieder would themselves have fully confirmed Ehrlich's statement, had
they only calculated the absolute figures in a few of their cases.
Selecting from the seven cases in this paper, those where it is possible
from the given data to obtain the absolute number of the eosinophil
cells, we get the following results:
Case 29 3.5% eos. 14,000 per mm.^{3}
" 30 3.9% " 8,000 "
" 31 3.4% " 11,000 "
The figure given by Zappert as a high normal value is 250. In these
cases there is an average number of 11,000, that is 50 times as great.
The observations then of Mueller and Rieder themselves suffice fully to
confirm Ehrlich's statement.
The absolute number of eosinophil cells depends naturally to a certain
extent on the relative proportion of white to red corpuscles, and the
greater the relative number of leucocytes, the greater should be the
number of eosinophils. Zappert, for instance, found the following
figures in his cases:
Proportion of white Absolute number
to red corpuscles. of eosinophils.
1:24 3,000-4,560
1:18 3,300
1:15 7,000
1:13 8,700
1:11 6,000
1:7.6 8,300
1:7.0 7,600
1:7.0 29,000
1:5.0 14,000
1:3.8 34,000.
Apart from the approximate parallelism between the two rows of figures,
this abstract shews that the minimal value--3,000 eosinophils with a
proportion of white to red of 1:24--still amounts to 15 times the
normal. The maximal figure found by Zappert of 30,000 is moreover by no
means to be considered extreme. Cases of leukaemia are not infrequent in
which we find 100,000 eosinophils per mm.^{3} and over.
From these figures it must be admitted that the absolute increase of the
eosinophil cells in medullary leukaemia is not "alleged" (v. Limbeck) but
on the contrary is very rea
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