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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    eliminated by the errmnctories is capable of producing intoxica- tion in the doses in which these substances are formed in the normal organism. The problem to be solved is to seek for the measure of the activity of the toxic substances which are elimi- nated in twenty-four hours by all the emunctories combined,— and what enables us to determine this in a given time is the quantity of poison capable of intoxicating a known weight of living matter. We cannot set ourselves to solve this problem with any emunctory that we choose. Thus, among emunctories whose failure to functionate can contribute to intoxication of the organism the lung is beyond all dispute: without counting the other toxic substances it elimi- nates, the carbonic acid which it exhales in twenty-four hours would poison a man a great number of times. The intestine does not offer a soil for useful experiments, for we are powerless to make the distinction between toxic products which are brought there by the secretions and those which are formed therein. In regard to the skin, researches are embarrassing, on account of the small quantity of products secreted and of the difficulty which we have of collecting them. It is, therefore, from the urinary tract that we will seek for the demonstration of the toxicity of the products of emunction; by it is reserved the speciality of eliminating toxic substances which are not volatile, a deduction being allowed for that which is destroyed in the liver and in the totality of the organism. What methods are allowed to us for the introduction into the organism of toxic substances? Ingestion by the digestive canal is an illusory method. We are obliged to dilute the toxic materials to make them acceptable. We introduce them into an organ which is continually eliminating by the stools a part of its contents. How can we know what quantity of that which we have introduced has been absorbed ? Besides, absorption from the intestinal canal is very slow, and the organism has time to protect itself by eliminating the poison. M. Morel-Lavallee has communicated to the Clinical Society the following fact: In a patient who had ingested 60 grams of laudanum from 2 o'clock in the morning to 8 o'clock in the morning, washing out of the stomach removed 45 grams of the poison. In six hours one-