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
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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![tions may be useful in certain intoxications,—caused by poisons, for instance,—not because they eliminate the poisons themselves, but probably because they expel from the organism the abnormal products which it has formed under the influence of the poisons. In many putrid intoxications in individuals who are the subjects of deep-seated, foul sores the odor of the skin recalls that of their suppuration. What enables us to understand the useful part played by perspiration in the cure of these morbid states is the odor which the skin assumes under the influence of certain disorders of nutrition. Among hypochondriacs—the alienated, living in absolute inactivity, and with defective ali- mentation—fatty acids are eliminated more abundantly by the skin. From this arises the odor special to the places inhabited by men forced to this kind of life,—the odors of asylums, of prisons, barracks,—odors which differ one from the other. [So marked is the odor that, since it clings to newly washed clothes, laundresses can name the patients to whom the clothes belong by their peculiar smell.] When nutrition is deranged, by depressing influences acting through the intermediary of the nervous system, we may be warned of its being so by the odor. There is in existence an experimental demonstration of the part which the cutaneous emunctory plays in the elimination of toxic substances. We know that the varnishing of the skin of animals produces a marked fall in the heat of the body. Is this the result of failure of the cutaneous respiration? It is hardly probable. Is it due to the action of the varnish upon the nerve terminations ? Why, this reflex action is much less than faradi- zation, the application of cold or of heat; besides, what these forms of irritation of the tissues determine is albuminuria, not hematuria, convulsions, and reduced temperature. What is special to the varnishing is perhaps the retention of poisonous substances which the skin ought to eliminate. By the lungs are eliminated carbonic acid (1100 grams in twenty-four hours), water, ammonia sometimes, and often vola- tile fatty acids, which explain the fetid character of the breath of people the subjects of constipation and of hypochondriasis, and which are the result of a depraved nutrition or of an incom- plete destruction of matter. By the lungs, too, are eliminated](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21176188_0041.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
