Volume 1

The Internal secretions and the principles of medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous.

  • Charles E. de M. Sajous
Date:
1903-1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The Internal secretions and the principles of medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    146/872 (page 112)
    logical conclusion available, therefore, is that only a portion of the blood is directly involved. We can thus account for the cases of hfematoporphyrinuria in which apparently normal health is present—though the reserve of suprarenal tissue is steadily being destroyed by some morbid process—and brought on by an intercurrent disorder in which a toxic action prevails: sulphona], trional, lead, rheumatism, gout, etc., and particularly hepatic disorders, in which cloudy swelling and fatty degen- eration are so prominent. What is the nature of the process? Kast and Weiss,^* in their study of the hasmolytic effects of sulphonal upon the blood, state that under certain pathological conditions, and especially in anasmic women, there exists a loose combination of the blood-pigment. The same remark is applicable with insufficiency of the suprarenal glands as the underlying factor of the hsemolytic process, on the condition, however, that the suprarenal glands be recognized as producing a secretion en- dowed with the marked affinity for oxygen which it is now known to possess, and that this affinity be considered a part of the process. It is clear that deficiency of suprarenal secre- tion must carry with it a loose combination of the blood- pigment, since oxidation^ as shown by the character of the reducing agents required to disintegrate blood in vitro, repre- sents the principal bond of union between all the main bodies involved. With both organs diseased, such a condition of the blood is always more or less marked, and, when an acute toxic intercurrent process suddenly appears, this loose combina- tion becomes accentuated in proportion to the intensity of the morbid effects upon the glands. If these effects are over- whelming, the blood is everywhere scarlet, to use Rabuteau's expression in reference to his oxalic-acid cases; if they are not, the clinical picture presented is that of the cases reported, in which the original disease shows more or less marked tend- ency to pervert the characteristic suprarenal symptoms that appear when only one pathogenic factor is present. Here, however, an additional source of blood-disintegration appears on the field. Kast and Weiss: Berliner klin. Wochenschrift, July la, 1896.