Collected papers / edited by W. D. Halliburton.

  • King's College, London. Physiological Laboratory.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Collected papers / edited by W. D. Halliburton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    89/264 (page 5)
    disposal did not enable us to do more than this. We thus ob- tained no positive chemical evidence of the presence of choline. Specimens of beri-beri blood are, however, so rarely ob- tained, that we think it not altogether devoid of interest to record our imperfect observations; no doubt the subject will be taken up by others whose opportunities of seeing such patients are more extensive. The disease is a nervous one, accompanied by great cardiac failure, vascular depression, and oedema. Later on, in the present case, when the patient died, a post-mortem microscopical examination of the tissues per- formed by one of us (F. W. M.) showed extensive degenera- tion of peripheral nerves and fatty degeneration of the muscles, including the heart. It is therefore not to be won- dered at that the blood should contain a toxic material pro- ducing vascular depression, nor (remembering the nerve de- generation) that the toxic substance should be similar in its action to choline. The accompanying photomicrograph shows the fatty de- generation of the heart in beri-beri. This specimen was ob- tained from the heart of a Chinaman who died of the disease. At the post-mortem examination there was great venous con- gestion and distension of the right side of the heart with dark blood. The liver, stomach, and intestines were greatly congested, and numerous haemorrhages throughout the sub- stance of the liver were found microscopically. Notes. 1 An abstract lias already appeared in the Proceedings of the Society, 1899. 3 Naturally the alcohol was evaporated off, and the residue, dissolved in normal saline solution, was then injected.