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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    artificial termination that the symptoms and physical signs dis- appear. In such a case the liver has failed to arrest and destroy the intestinal poisons as they pass through it and the result is that owing to their excess in the blood and inability on the part of the kidneys to eliminate them the patient is poisoned by products formed within her own body.] If intoxication is one of the accidents likely to arise from disturbances of nutrition let us see what infection can do. We have thought over many of the hypotheses bearing upon the mode of action of microbes. But if the anatomy of these hurt- ful agents is scarcely known their physiology is still less known. We have imagined that they act in five different ways. We have ascribed to them a mechanical role, supposing that they might cause obstruction in the vessels, more particularly those of the lung and the kidney. The fact is perfectly demonstrated for charbon and for the septicemia of Charrin; but the microbes which live in the blood are rare—almost the exception. It is also admitted that they may induce traumatic changes,—erode and perforate cells. This is an hypothesis whose aid I called in when I established the group of infectious nephritides. We find microbes in the organism,—in urine,—and there is perhaps a lesion of the renal epithelium. It is admissible that they have broken through this epithelial barrier, and that in their course through it they have brought about its deterioration; but in this there is only probability. The history of the cholera of fowls proves to us that microbes attack muscular fiber; in certain catarrhs of the bladder and vagina they penetrate in large num- bers the epithelial cells. I have demonstrated in blennorrhagia that the micrococcus of ISTeisser inhabits essentially the proto- plasm of the pavement cells of the urethra or of the conjunctiva, and that the leucocytes are for it an accessory or secondary resting place. It is also said'that microbes cause death by the anatomical lesions which they develop. Assuredly there is among them some which produce oedema, haemorrhage, suppuration, emphy- sema, and gangrene; but to say that they act because they pro- duce these effects is to solve the problem by admitting as dem- onstrated that which is still a matter of discussion; the essen-