In the course of some investigations at the Babies' Hospital on nutritional edema of infants, determinations of total solids of the blood and chlorid content of the plasma were made on a large number of children. Some interesting facts which were brought out in the course of this work are here presented. A discussion of the significance of the findings will not be attempted. Therefore, a review of the extensive literature on the osmotic pressure of the blood and the relation of blood water and salts to the fluids in the tissues, conditions which have been supposed to have some importance in the production of this form of edema, is hardly called for here.
The literature of the two subjects which are considered in this communication is very limited. We have been unable to find reported any results of chlorid determinations in the plasma of infants' blood. Also, very few