Studies in experimental alcoholism / by Reid Hunt.

  • Reid Hunt
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Studies in experimental alcoholism / by Reid Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/44 (page 11)
    trile with the formation of methyl alcohol on the one hand and hydro¬ cyanic acid on the other, according to the equation CH3CN + H20 = CH3OH + HCN. Such a reaction has not been obtained by chemical processes outside of the body, and we have no reason to suppose that it can occur within the body.® A study of a number of related nitriles led me to form another conception of the process by which the hydrocyanic acid is formed. On comparing the toxicity of a number of nitriles I noticed that there is a relation between the degree of toxicity and the ease with which the hydrocarbon residue, to which the cyanogen group is lunited, is oxidized in the body. Thus acetonitrile is the least poison¬ ous of the series of aliphatic nitriles studied; the methyl group is the most difficult of the hydrocarbon residues in these compounds for the body to oxidize. Proprionitrile (C2H5CN) is many times more poisonous than acetonitrile; the ethyl group (C2H5) is readily oxidized in the body. After the administration of acetonitrile, formic acid (a product of the oxidation of the methyl group) is found in the urine; this shows that the oxidation is incomplete; after proprionitrile, the urine contains no formic (or acetic) acid, the ethyl group having been completely oxidized. The difference in the ease of oxidation of the methyl and ethyl groups is most strikingly illustrated by the fate in the body of ethyl and methyl alcohol, respectively. Ethyl alcohol, even when administered in comparatively large doses to man or other animals, is completely oxidized within a few hours; methyl alcohol, on the other hand, even in small amounts, is imperfectly oxidized, and the process extends over days instead of hours—-a fact which led pharmacologists b to utter a word of warning concerning the use of methyl as a substitute for ethyl alcohol years before there was a single well-known case of poisoning by it in man, a warning recently justified by the hundreds of cases of death and blindness caused by this substance.0 Having formed the conception that hydrocyanic acid is liberated from acetonitrile through the oxidation of the methyl group/ I began experiments to determine the effects upon the toxicity of the nitrile, a The formation of hydrocyanic acid from nitroprussiate of soda, on the other hand, is probably the result of a hydrolytic cleavage (Carquet, These, Montpelier, 1903). b See Hunt, Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, XIII, p. 213; 1902. c See Buller and Wood, Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc., Oct., 1904. d An analogy to this supposed mode of decomposition is that of ammonium chloride in rabbits. Pohl and Munzer (Arch. f. exp. Path. u. Pharm., v. 43, p. 28) found that when this substance was administered to rabbits the ammonia was converted into urea while the hydrochloric acid was liberated and the animals died of acid intoxication; the fatal dose of the ammonium chloride corresponded closely to the equivalent amount of hydrochloric acid. In a similar manner Kohn and Czapek (Hofmeister’s Beit., v. 8, p. 302; 1906) explain the injurious effects of certain salts upon the growth of fungi. Some fungi use up the kations and the organisms become poisoned by the acids formed from the anions; others use up the anions and become poisoned by the alkalies formed from the kations.