Ptomaïnes and leucomaïnes, and bacterial proteids, or the chemical factors in the causation of disease / By Victor C. Vaughan ... and Frederick G. Novy.

  • Vaughan, Victor C. (Victor Clarence), 1851-1929.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ptomaïnes and leucomaïnes, and bacterial proteids, or the chemical factors in the causation of disease / By Victor C. Vaughan ... and Frederick G. Novy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    albumin is sometimes absorbed and produces marked dis- turbances. A boy, after eating sixteen raw eggs, had a high fever accompanied by the appearance of both albumin and haemoglobin in the urine. Brieger obtained by digesting fibrin with gastric juice a substance which gives reactions with many of the general alkaloidal reagents and to which he has given the name peptotoxine. A few drops of a dilute aqueous solution of this substance sufficed to kill frogs within fifteen min- utes. The frogs became apparently paralyzed and did not respond to stimuli. Slight tremor was perceptible in the muscles of the extremities. Rabbits of about one kilo- gramme weight were given from 0.5 to 1 gramme of the extract subcutaneously. About fifteen minutes after the injection, paralysis beginning in the posterior extremities set in; the animal fell into a somnolent condition, sank and died. In some rabbits several hours elapsed before the above-mentioned symptoms appeared. Peptotoxine was found by Brieger to be formed not only by the digestive juice, but to be among the first putrefactive products of proteids, as fibrin, casein, brain substance, liver, and muscle. It is highly probable that many of the nervous symptoms which accompany some forms of dyspepsia are due to the formation and absorption of poisonous substances. In some persons the tendency to the formation of poisons out of certain foods is very marked. Thus, there are some to whom the smallest bit of egg is highly poisonous ; with others, milk will not agree; and instances of this kind are sufficiently numerous to give rise to the adage, What is one man's meat is another man's poison. Brunton is of the opinion that the condition which we term biliousness, and which is most likely to exist in those who eat largely of proteids, is due to the formation of poisonous alkaloids; but of this we have no positive proof. Whether or not the unorganized digestive ferments ever find their way into the blood in quantity sufficient to cause deviations from health, we are not in a position to state