Isolation of the pressor principles of putrid meat / by George Barger and G.S. Walpole.

  • Barger, George, 1878-1939
Date:
[1909?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Isolation of the pressor principles of putrid meat / by George Barger and G.S. Walpole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Vol. XXXVIII. No. 4, March 22, 1909.] ISOLATION OF THE PRESSOR PRINCIPLES OF PUTRID MEAT. By G. BARGER, and G. S. WALPOLE. {From the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, London.) That an extract of putrefied horse-meat raises the arterial blood- pressure when injected intravenously, was first shown by Abelous, Ribaut, Soulie and Toujan1 in 1906. These authors obtained from putrid meat the impure hydrochloride of a chloroform soluble base, which showed a very marked pressor action. Later Dixon and Taylor2 observed that extracts of human placenta, injected intravenously, similarly caused a rise of blood-pressure, and, in addition, contraction of the pregnant uterus. Rosenheim found, while attempting to isolate the active principle of placenta, that only the more or less putrefied placenta gave active extracts, the fresh or merely autolysed organ failing to do so. He suggested at a meeting of the Physiological Society in January, 1908, that a crystalline hydrochloride obtained by him, was very probably identical with that of the French authors. In order to test this supposed identity, we prepared a quantity of the base from putrid horse-meat and soon found that after complete extraction with chloroform, the aqueous solution still retained a considerable proportion of its original activity3, due to a second base, insoluble in chloroform, which Abelous and his collaborators had apparently overlooked. This base was only present in small quantities, and the large amount of material necessary for its examination enabled us to identify the chloro¬ form soluble base at the same time. Abelous and Ribaut4 have more recently analysed an oxalate of this latter base. After we had com¬ municated our results to Rosenheim, he was able to show that one base obtained by him from putrid placenta was identical with that one of our bases from putrid meat which was insoluble in chloroform, and 1 C. R. Soc. de Biol. i. pp. 463, 530. 1906. 2 Brit. Med. Joum. 1907, ir, p. 1150. 3 The physiological experiments were performed for us by Dr H. H. Dale. 4 C. R. Soc. de Biol. i. p. 908. 1908. PH. XXXVIII. 23