Talk:Blood

Blood also removes poisons and waste products to the liver, the kidneys, and the intestines to allow them to be rejected from the body in urine and feces.

Is it correct that blood moves wastes to the intestines to be turned into feces? AxelBoldt 03:55 31 May 2003 (UTC)

There may be creatures in which it does, but it seems very unlikely. And poisons is not a good term when products of metabolism are under discussion. Kosebamse 07:14 31 May 2003 (UTC)

Red blood cells or erythrocytes (96%). In mammals, these corpuscles lack a nucleus and organelles, so are not cells strictly speaking.

I don't see how this can make sense. There are plenty of other types of cells (e.g. prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria) which lack nuclei and most organelles, yet nobody disputes their right to be called cells. Opinions? Davidmpye 22:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, and cell acknowledges prokaryotic cells. I'll modify this. --Calair 23:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As eurthocytes break down (~100days of life) the heme groups are sent to the kidney and broken down, some of that is sent to the large intestine as waste. It is this blood waste that turns our poo brown. Dunno if someone wants to clean up that very untechnical definition and add it or not 66.243.209.222 (talk · contribs)

Blood is more than just erythrocytes. It is plasma, buffy coat and haematocrit. Before we mention the metabolism of haemoglobin we need to decide how we will discuss the metabolism of albumin, globulins, platelets, leukocytes... JFW | T@lk 21:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think we will eventually have to make an article on human blood and move most of this article's material there. Insects for instance also have blood, but this article does not apply to their blood at all. AxelBoldt 03:55 31 May 2003 (UTC)

Which raises the question whether most anatomy, physiology &c. articles should not be split into a general (zoo- or bio-) and a specific (anthropo-) part. Sometimes the distiction is made, e.g. with anatomy and human anatomy. Kosebamse 07:41 31 May 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I think that has to happen eventually for most articles. AxelBoldt 18:55 31 May 2003 (UTC)

"higher animals" needs rephrasing IMO -Hemanshu 09:18, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This article states that

In the medieval theory of the four bodily humours, blood was associated with fire and with a merry and gluttonous (sanguine) personality.

however the bodily humours article states they associated it with air JeffBobFrank 04:03, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

More Facts

I don't know if these facts should be added, and if so, I don't know where and how to put them. However, I uncovered that " In one day, your blood travels nearly 12,000 miles. Your heart beats around 35 million times per year. Your heart pumps a million barrels of blood during the average lifetime -- enough to fill three supertankers." If put in, this need to be reworded. Prodigaldruid-Talk]] 17:06, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Suggest adding this, too, if it can be confirmed: tot #red corpuscles in the body are recycled every 356 sec. Trekphiler 22:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not true, they live for 120 days. JFW | T@lk 22:58, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Vikings a germanic tribe

is there any source indicating vikings was a germanic tribe? (text:Germanic tribes (such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings) Dan Koehl 12:11, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Amount of Blood

Does anyone know how much blood a human can loose before they die? Proportionately (i.e. 3/4 or 1/2)?

>>lost of 1.5l of blood will probably kill you... it is about 1/4

Let's say Mike over here has about 5 liters of blood in his body. He is shot and he bleeds to death. How much blood would Mike have lost before he dies?

This article doesn't even list the difference in blood volume between males and females. Men have 1.500 gallons of blood, compared to 0.875 gallons for women. Also, the combined surface area of all the erythrocytes in the human anatomy is roughly 2,000 times as great as the body's exterior surface. Jordan Yang 18:14 14 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Instead of complaining I would edit the article accordingly. JFW | T@lk 14:04, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As you wish Jordan Yang 22:20 21 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Could you please provide a source for this data? The '1.5 gallon' figure for men is reasonable (although we should probably stick to metric), but 0.875 gallons for women is substantially lower than any figure I've ever encountered. This paper, for instance, gives an average blood volume for normal female subjects as ~60 mL/kg; combined with an average weight of ~ 65 kg (eyeballed from here, probably a bit low) that gives an average blood volume of ~ 3.9 liters, which is just over 1 US gallon. (You could get a figure of around .875 gallons if using Imperial rather than US gallons, but the male figure of 1.5 gallons is *not* in Imperial gallons... a good example of why it's safer to stick to metric.) And shun false precision, unless you really mean that those numbers are accurate to within 0.001 gallons. --Calair 02:45, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Red Blood Cells

The red blood cells look like donuts :)--Princess Homestar

on bleodsian and blessing

I would definately remove the comment about the Catholic Church 'adoption' of the Anglo-Saxon 'bleodsian' into 'blessing'. First off, the Catholic liturgy was spoken originally in Latin, so they probably wouldn't use the word 'blessing' persay. Granted, the ENGLISH word 'blessing' seems to come from the Anglo-Saxon owing to common sense, but my point is that the section concerning the Catholics apparently borrowing yet another slice of paganism for their own practices smacks a little of poor scholastics. So, I'd just like to see that section cleared up. I suppose I could do it myself, but I wouldn't be so bold as to do something so drastic on the actual article, so I'll leave it to someone more experienced. Ryan 23:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The etymology of "bless" indicates that it was used in the translation of the Bible to English. I am doubtful that the Catholic Chuch adopted the term. The early English translations of the Bible were Reformation-related activities I believe.

From www.etymonline.com entry for "bless": O.E. bletsian, bledsian, Northumbrian bloedsian "to consecrate, make holy," from P.Gmc. *blothisojan "mark with blood," from *blotham "blood" (see blood). Originally a blood sprinkling on pagan altars. This word was chosen in O.E. bibles to translate L. benedicere and Gk. eulogein, both of which have a ground sense of "to speak well of, to praise," but were used in Scripture to translate Heb. brk "to bend (the knee), worship, praise, invoke blessings." Meaning shifted in late O.E. toward "to confer happiness, well-being," by resemblance to unrelated bliss. No cognates in other languages. Blessing is O.E. bledsung.

Merge Oxygenated blood into Blood

(The merge was proposed by L33th4x0rguy.) There is very little content in the Oxygenated blood article, but I agree it seems much more appropriate in the Blood article. In fact, it seems as though parts already overlap with the information under the Physiology of Blood section. --Leapfrog314 02:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support merge, though all but one sentence or so is redundant with this article. --Calair 01:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merged Little content, merged. Navou ^talk 02:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]