HEMOCYTOPENIC ACTION OF THE SPLEEN IN TYPHUS ABDOMINALIS

Abstract

We examined the hemocytopenic action of the spleen 53 times on the 41 cases of typhoid fever, paratyphus A & B, and obtained following results.
Maturity disturbance of the erythroblast and neutrophile leucocyte is one of the causes of anemia and leucopenia seen in these diseases, and the main cause of thrombocytopenia is the decrease in the activity of platelet formation of the megakaliocytes.
Moreover, from the finding of the unusual morphological changes of megakaliocytes, it was conjectured that in some occasions the megakaliocytes were damaged directly by certain noxeus substances. We proved a positive case of Coombs test and noticed that there were occasionally hemolysis due to autoantibody.
During the febrile state, the colour index showed within normal range in general and some were increased, but excessive decrease were relative rare. During the same state, serum iron content revealed normal range in the most cases and were relatively lower in some cases, but after the reduction of fever, increasing tendency of iron content was observed. Wa made this phenomenon out as following; the serum iron was caught somewhere during febrile stadium, and was released after the reduction of fever, and this cause transient increase of serum iron in this stadium.
Even by the time of disappearance of eosinophile leucocytes on the peripheral blood picture, the decrease of eosinophile cell count in the bone marrow was not recognizable and, furthermore, mature eosinophilecytes were not decreased in general.
It is impossible to explain completely the rôle of splenomegalia due to infection on the mechanism of the hemocytopenia in these disease only by above mentioned results of our clinical examinations, but it may be said that the splenomegalia is an influential cause of the hemocytopenia.