ATMOSPHERIC AIR, LIFE, AND THE BLOOD The life of highly organized animals and man is intimately linked with the intake by the organism (via the blood) of atmospheric oxygen at a certain partial pressure. It is the air—blood system which is primarily responsible for the very existence of highly organized life. Chizhevskii revealed a remarkable correlation between the number of oxygen molecules passing through the blood vessels in the lungs during a single inhalation, and the number of hemoglobin molecules in the erythrocytes passing through the capillary network of the lungs in the same time period. The air—blood system proved to be tuned with mathematical precision. This tuning developed during the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
Further studies of the circulatory system, such as the assimilation and transport mechanism led the same author to conclusions of extraordinary importance for understanding, from the metabolic aspect, the part played by the dynamics and kinematics of the red blood corpuscles in the blood vessels.' Chizhevskii was the first to consider the subject of the spatial distribu tion of erythrocytes in human blood vessels. The bulk of the blood consists of erythrocytes shaped as circular biconcave disks. Their diameter is 7 to 8 microns and their thickness approximately 2 microns.
A drop of blood viewed under the microscope reveals a large number of erythrocytes with occasional white blood cells (normally one leukocyte per 714 erythrocytes). Among the randomly distributed cells, the erythro cytes occasionally appear to stick together, lying one upon the other (com pletely or partially). These formations are especially well preserved in wet preparations. They are known as rouleaux (coin rolls) because they resemble rolls of coins.
The erythrocytes carry out most vital functions, such as gas exchange, transport of protein-breakdown products, immunological processes, regu lation of the ionic composition of plasma and of the osmotic and acid-alkali equilibrium, adsorption of toxins and drugs, etc. In human blood, the total surface of erythrocytes (through which metabolism is carried out) reaches approximately 3000 The spatial distribution of erythrocytes in the bloodstream has been mathematically analyzed by Chizhevskii, who demonstrated that at a normal count (5 the erythrocytes must congregate in symmetrical formations, with their concave sides facing one another. Any other
arrangement would drastically reduce their normal concentration per unit blood volume, while an entirely random distribution would allow for only 2 million erythrocytes per Thus, in the normal organism, the sym metrical formations of erythrocytes within the blood vessel must be strictly maintained. This strict arrangement is disrupted by various diseases.
In anemias a semirandom or even random distribution of erythrocytes may be expected in the bloodstream.
The mathematical evidence of an ordered spatial distribution of erythro cytes in the normal bloodstream, and the tremendous significance of this phenomenon for the understanding of many blood functions of utmost im portance led Chizhevskii to substantiate his mathematical deductions by actual blood preparations. He focused his attention on the rouleaux, a seemingly negligible and well-known appearance in blood smears, daily puzzling tens of thousands of laboratory technicians, physiologists, and physicians throughout the world. Only clinicians had noticed that complete absence of these rouleaux in the blood indicated a serious condition of the patient. Once, while examining a blood smear, Chizhevskii noticed that in certain fields the rouleaux displayed a parallel arrangement; this had been overlooked by hematologists.
Chizhevskii questioned whether these erythrocyte chains might not be remnants of the characteristic spatial blood structures as the blood flows through the vessels, and which disintegrate, almost completely, as soon as the flow has been stop p e d, i, e., when the blood has been removed from the body. The parallel arrangement of the erythrocyte chains in certain fields of the smear suggested their similar arrangement within the blood vessels. On the basis of this assumption a most thorough experimental investigation, theoretically very intricate, was conducted, involving several years of hard work. Thousands of blood preparations were examined, hundreds of analyses performed, new research techniques developed, and equations evolved, expressing the dynamics of blood corpuscles. The result was the experimental discovery of the dynamic structure of the flowing blood corpuscles in the vessels, and the devising of a mathematical model of this flow.