Hæmatoporphyrinuria and its relations to the source of urobilin / by David Fraser Harris.

  • David Fraser Fraser-Harris
Date:
[1897]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hæmatoporphyrinuria and its relations to the source of urobilin / 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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    Haematoporphyrinuria and its Relations to the Origin of Urobilin. By David Praser Harris, B.Sc. (Lond.), M.B., CM. (Read April 5, 1897.) a The chief pigment of normal urine is known as urobilin (seeing that this name indicates a relation to bile, urochrome would be a better term, not connoting any view as to genetic relationship). The name for the chromogen urobilinogen would become urochromogen. Other pigments are or may be present in normal urine, e.g., the indigo-blue pigment whose ancestor is intestinal indol, and uroeryth% genetically related, it is believed, to skatol, while, according to some physiologists, traces of patho- logical urobilin (which might be better called para-urochrome) and even of hsematoporphyrin are recognisable in healthy urine. Certainly, in some morbid urines, urohaematoporphyrin has been the chief pigment replacing urobilin, while, in a few very rare ones, a pigment allied to it, but, according to M'Munn, less de- oxidised, has appeared. This substance, like urobilin and uro- haematoporphyrin, is a proteid-free, iron-free pigment, as yet unnamed. I propose to call it meio-de-oxyhaamatoporphyrin. Urobilin is amber-coloured, urohaematoporphyrin makes the urine of orange tint, while the rarer ally gives it a deep port-wine colour: urines containing this last do not decompose for many weeks. I lately encountered meio-de-oxyhaematoporphyrin in the urine from a case of rare skin-disease, Dermatitis herpetiformis bullosa* Both these haematoporphyrins have absorption-spectra resembling that of alkaline hajmatoporphyrin, and each, on the addition of strong sulphuric acid, is changed to the characteristic two-banded acid-hsematoporphyrin. In what way is urobilin related to these rarer and less de- oxidised pigments? Let us dispose, in the first place, of the biliary theory of the formation of urobilin, which is, that bilirubin or biliverdin in the intestine is acted upon by nascent hydrogen, * M'Call Anderson, Scot. Med. and Sur. Jour., Feb. 1897.