On septic and auto-intoxications as causes of disease : an address given to the Birkenhead Medical Society on March 9th, 1894 / by William Carter.

  • Carter, William, 1836-1913
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On septic and auto-intoxications as causes of disease : an address given to the Birkenhead Medical Society on March 9th, 1894 / by William Carter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    widely diffused throughout the living tissues and cells of animals, and when we remember that the end product of the oxidation of hydrogen, namely, water, is absolutely harmless, but that the corresponding product of the com- bination between sulphur and hydrogen is extremely poisonous, and when we further bear in mind that we always have within us a substance capable, under favour- able conditions, of rapidly determining this latter combina- tion, we shall see the importance of possessing the means of repressing its activity on the one hand, while we promote that of oxidation on the other, I shall best illustrate this by again briefly describing a case. On September 7th, 1892, I was asked to see, with Dr. T. B. G-riuisdale, a young married lady, seven months pregnant of her first child. The symptoms generally were those of septic fever, but very prominent among them were intense head-ache and so much drowsiness, that it was difficult to arouse the patient into sufficient wakeful- ness to admit of her being examined. There was no jaundice ; yet very little, if any, bile was discharged in the motions. But what struck us most of all was the horribly offensive character of the urine. It was acid, and smelt very strongly of sulphuretted hydrogen, while a lead paper suspended in the upper part of a bottle containing some of it, was instantly blackened. We could obtain no evidence whatever of an external cause of septic infection, and came to the conclusion, which we expressed to the husband, who, by-the-bye, was a scientific man conver- sant with chemical processes, that the cause of all the symptoms was auto-intoxication from a perverted chemis- try, the special poison being probably a volatile sulphur compound resembling, and possibly being, hydrogen sul- phide; and that, if this poison-making process could be stopped, things would right themselves. Calomel, chlorine,
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