THE EQUILIBRIUM BETWEEN CEREBROSPINAL FLUID AND BLOOD PLASMA

Abstract

Mestrezat¹in his monograph described the cerebrospinal fluid as a dialysate in osmotic equilibrium with the blood plasma. The most important evidence favoring this conception has been reviewed in some detail in several papers by one of us.²The quantitative description of the equilibrium between the blood plasma and such a protein-free dialysate as the cerebrospinal fluid is important not only in furthering the understanding of the cerebrospinal fluid itself, but also because the cerebrospinal fluid represents the only protein-free dialysate in the organism present in sufficiently large quantities for adequate analysis. Mestrezat¹called attention to the close analogy between the cerebrospinal fluid and the aqueous humor of the eye. He,³and independently, two of us (F. F.-S. and M. E. D.⁴) suggested an analogy between the cerebrospinal fluid and the intercellular fluids. One of us (F. F.-S.)²also noted that the glomerular filtrate