Abstract
THE PRESENCE of free protoporphyrin in the circulating red blood cells was first described in 1928 by van den Bergh and Hyman.<sup>1</sup>This discovery was widely confirmed, and in the intervening period considerable knowledge has been gained of variations in concentration in disease.<sup>2</sup>In 1936 it was pointed out that reticulocytes are especially rich in porphyrin.<sup>3</sup>At that time a satisfactory method of quantitative determination was not available. Later, with the use of the method devised in collaboration with Grinsterin,<sup>4</sup>it soon became apparent that the correlation of erythrocyte porphyrin concentration with reticulocyte percentage varied considerably with the situation at hand.<sup>2a</sup>In acute phenylhydrazine anemia of rabbits the correlation was quite close; in pernicious anemia with liver therapy the peak of porphyrin concentration in the red cells was considerably later than the peak of reticulocyte percentage; in iron deficiency anemias and lead poisoning very great
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