Volume 1

A textbook of pharmacology, therapeutics and materia medica.

  • Brunton, T. Lauder (Thomas Lauder), 1844-1916.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A textbook of pharmacology, therapeutics and materia medica. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    157/816 (page 101)
    similar results were obtained several years ago by Lewis and Douglas Cunningham with cholera stools in which any organisms present had been destroyed by boiling. The extract from putrefied maize has a tetanic and narcotic action, which appears to be due to two different substances. These are not present in the same proportion, so that sometimes the tetanising action, and at other times the narcotic action, is most marked. Another alkaloid, resembling atropine in its action, has been separated by Sonnenschein and Zuelzer from decomposing animal matter; and this has also been found in the bodies of persons dying from typhus fever. Another which resembles curare in its action has been separated by Guareschi and Mosso 1 from putrefying brain. Another substance causing tetanic symptoms has also been obtained from animal matter. Leucoma'ines.—Gautier, to whom much of our knowledge regarding alkaloids produced by albuminous decomposition is due, has given the name of leucomaines to alkaloids which are not produced by putrefaction due to bacteria, but are formed by the decomposition of albuminous matters in the normal processes of waste in the living animal tissues. Amongst these he reckons various substances formed in muscles and allied to xanthine and creatine.2 Brieger has shown that during the digestion of fibrin by pepsin an alkaloid has been formed, to which he gives the name of peptotoxin. Absorption and Elimination of Ptomaines and Leuco- maines.—It is probable that a considerable production of alkaloids takes place in the intestine, both when the digestive processes are normal and more especially when they are disordered; at the same time alkaloids are being formed in the muscles, and pos- sibly also in other tissues. Were all the alkaloids to be retained in the body, poisoning would undoubtedly ensue, and Bouchard considers that the alkaloids formed in the intestine of a healthy man in twenty-four hours would be sufficient to kill him if they were all absorbed and excretion stopped. He finds that the poisonous activity of even healthy human faeces is very great, and a substance obtained from them by dialysis produced violent convulsions in rabbits. When the functions of the kidney are im- paired, so that excretion is stopped, uraemia occurs, and Bouchard would give the name of stercoraemia to this condition, because he believes it to be due to alkaloids absorbed from the intestines He also thinks thait the nervous disturbance which occurs in cases of dyspepsia is due to poisoning by ptomaines. That 1 Les Ptomaines, Turin, 1883. 2 Sur les alcaloidcs derives de la destruction baetdrienne ouphysiologique des tissus animaux. Paris : G. Masson. 1886.