Lectures on auto-intoxication in disease, or, Self-poisoning of the individual / by Ch. Bouchard ; tr., with a preface and new chapters added, by Thomas Oliver.

  • Bouchard, Ch. (Charles), 1837-1915.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on auto-intoxication in disease, or, Self-poisoning of the individual / by Ch. Bouchard ; tr., with a preface and new chapters added, by Thomas Oliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    rate, I have attempted this impossibility. In my trials of gen- eral antiseptic treatment, I had to turn my attention to sub- stances capable of arresting life in the infectious agents and rendering the activity of the microbes less intense. I had to adopt the intravenous mode of injection for these substances; for the absorption is so slow by the subcutaneous or intestinal method, and the elimination through the emunctories so rapid, that the antiseptic agent would not have time to impregnate the whole system. Observe that in all that I am saying there is nothing that should at present be applied to the therapeutic treatment of man; but I am justified in seeking, by experiments on animals, the solution of problems which so deeply concern the future of medicine. In order to try general antiseptic treat- ment by the intravenous method, it was necessary to attack first those diseases in which the microbe exists exclusively in the blood. The objection will perhaps be raised that the pathogenic agents of infectious maladies do not, as a rule, inhabit the blood; this would, however, be to forget recurrent fever, charbon, or malignant pustule. But, to speak only of the infectious diseases of animals, if my attempts failed when directed against Charrin's septicaemia, I obtained some encouraging results when treating bacteridian charbon. Last year I made out a list of some of the substances that may be utilized for general antiseptic treatment. Of these I will only discuss mercury. For my experiments I chose the biniodide of mercury, the most antiseptic, but not the most toxic of the salts of mercury. The therapeutic equivalent of the iodide of mercury is 2 milligrams. If we exceed this quantity we provoke protracted albuminuria. This quantity is dissolved by means of an equal quantity of iodide of sodium in from 5 to 12 cubic centimeters of water. I will now give the resume of the trials of general antiseptic treatment that I made with iodine and mercury. The greater number of the animals attacked with bacteridian charbon that I treated with injections of biniodide of mercury died. Never- theless, when we effected the inoculation of the bacteria not under the skin, but in the blood in the veins, these animals lived longer by several hours, even a day longer. Moreover, when the animals