The medical aspects of mustard gas poisoning / by Aldred Scott Warthin and Carl Vern Weller.

  • Aldred Scott Warthin
Date:
1919
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The medical aspects of mustard gas poisoning / by Aldred Scott Warthin and Carl Vern Weller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    product of mustard gas, dihydroxyethysulphide, were entirely negative. Marshall, Lynch and Smith, however, state that ‘‘Dichlorethylsulphide appears to be excreted in the urine (dogs), in part at least, as dihydroxyethylsulphide.’’? Our contradictory results leave this question still unsettled, and the hydrolysis theory of explanation of the action of mustard gas upon the cells can not be said to be demonstrated. Further, the work of Lillie, Clowes and Cham- bers (Science, 49, 1919) as to the action of mustard gas upon marine animals, while it sup- ports the view of the intracellular liberation of hydrochloric acid as the toxie factor, can not be taken as a conclusive demonstration of the truth of this hypothesis. On the other hand, as we have shown above, there are good reasons for believing that the toxic action of mustard gas after intravenous and subcutaneous injections may be less simple than the hydrolysis theory would indicate. In the series of acutely fatal intravenous injections of dichlorethylsulphide described above, we noted no specific changes in blood or blood-forming organs. Since the appearance of Pappenheimer’s preliminary report (Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, XVI, 92, 1919), we have carried out a series of investigations using much smaller doses of dichlor- ethylsulphide in alcoholic solutions, and have been enabled to confirm Pappenheimer’s ob- servation that in rabbits living to the third or fourth day after such injections, there occurs an initial leucocytosis followed quickly by an extraordinary drop so that before death the leucocytes may practically vanish from the circulation. Two protocols are given. RABBIT 103.—Injected intravenously with .006 ¢.c. of dichlorethylsulphide in alcoholic solution. A marked leucocytosis was noted in four hours. On the next day the white cells began to fall, and on the third day had reached 275. During this period the red cells remained slightly higher than normal. Blood smears showed only an occasional white cell. These were about equally divided between polynuclear Jeucocytes and degenerating mononuclears. Died on the fifth day. of RABBIT 104.—-Given 0.010 ¢.c. of dichlorethylsulphide intravenously in alcoholic solution. Showed in seventeen hours a leucocytosis of 23,600. On the next day the white cells began to fall rapidly, on the fourth day reaching 325. Smears showed only occasiona] white cells, about equal numbers of polynuclears and. degenerating mononuclears. Died on the fifth day. Both of these animals showed extraordinary depletion of the bone marrow and, to a lesser degree, of the spleen and lymphoid tissues. The second rabbit showed marked general edema. Intravenous injections of smail amounts of pure dichlorcthylsulphide do, therefore, pro- duce a marked leucopenia before death.