On the red ally of urohæmatoporphyrin : a retrospect of twelve cases / by David Fraser Harris.

  • Fraser-Harris, David Fraser, 1867-1937.
Date:
[1898]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the red ally of urohæmatoporphyrin : a retrospect of twelve cases / by David Fraser Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    Reprinted for the Author from the British Medical Journal, February 3th, 1898. ON THE EED ALLY OF UROHJEMATOPORPHYRIN : A RETROSPECT OF TWELVE CASES. By DAVID FEA.SER HAERIS, M.D., B.Sc.Lond., F.R.S.E., Muirhead Demonstrator of Physiology in the University of Glasgow. A case of disease is, from one point of view, a great physio- logical experiment performed by Nature, which often pre- sents us with processes arrested and functions perverted at very instructive stages. The appearance in the urine of the pigment known as haematoporphyrin, or one of its allies, in place of the amber-coloured pigment normally there, is an example of an arrested process—that of katabolism of pig- mentary matter derived from the blood, and taking place, on the largest scale, in the liver. The term urohaematoporphyrin dates from 1885, when MacMunn, in a paper1 on the colouring matters of bile and urine, rechristened what he had five years earlier named urohaematin.2 In 1880, in a case of rheumatic fever, he found urohaematin, and about the same date made it artificially by reduction of the pigment haematin. TTrohae- matin was then found in a case of pericarditis, and on several occasions in the urine of Addison's disease. Since 1885 this pigment has always been known as urohaemato- porphyrin; it gives to urine an orange colour, and has been detected in a number of diseases, namely, in addition to the three given above—peritonitis, meningitis, cirrhosis of liver, peritoneal blood effusion, croupous pneumonia, typhoid fever, measles, and Hodgkin's disease.3 4 In all these cases the colour of the urine, if not quite orange, is of a tint of amber deeper than the normal. Examined with the spectroscope, urohaematoporphyrin shows a four-banded spectrum, the wave-lengths of whose bands are published in many of the above-mentioned monographs but briefly put the bands are—one in the red to the left of d two between d and e, and one near the p line. This spectrum closely resembles that of a laboratory pigment alkaline haematoporphyrin also four-banded, whose bands differ slightly from those of the urinary pigment in situation and intensity. Haematoporphyrin as a laboratory pigment has been long known both in acid and alkaline solutions. Thudichum in 1872 called it cruentine.5 The acid solution is two-banded and very characteristic, the pigment is iron- free. MacMunn found it in several of the lower animals, in the integument of certain slugs, star-fishes, the earth-worm and in some birds' egg-shells.