Abstract
This thesis addresses an important problem of biomedical acid-base theory, where there are two apparently contradictory ways of describing the acid-base status of blood plasma, while the underlying physiology and chemistry obviously has to be only one. The two descriptions are called the traditional approach, based mainly on the work of Ole Siggaard-Andersen and the modern approach, based on the work of Peter Stewart and his followers.
This work has three starting points. First are generally accepted basic concepts of acid-base chemistry and physiology.
Second is an elegant formalism to the description of acid-base phenomena in complex solutions developed by Guenther.