The ptomaines or animal alkaloids and their relation to disease / by Arthur P. Luff.

  • Luff, Arthur Pearson, 1855-1938.
Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ptomaines or animal alkaloids and their relation to disease / by Arthur P. Luff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    much surer and more definite principles than the treat- ment of complex vital processes of whose nature we have but a vague and uncertain knowledge. In my.opinion, it is not so much in the body after death that we should search for these alkaloidal poisons, as in the excretions by which they may be eliminated, since on account of their probable instability they are extremely likely to have suffered decomposition under the influence of post-mortem changes. Granting that these poisons are produced during certain diseases, and are the causative factors of the symptoms of those diseases, then they must eventually either be destroyed within the body or eliminated in the excretions. It is, in my opinion, in the urine that careful research will most probably reveal the presence of these poisons. The nephritis produced so frequently in connection with certain fevers is probably due to the irritation of the kidney tissues by the poison during the act of elimination, just as cantharidin in being eliminated by the kidneys produces an inflammation of the kidney substance as a result of its irritant action. If we become acquainted with these poisons and their properties, then the discovery of antidotes that could render them insoluble or innocuous would lead us to the direct treatment of the infectious fevers, and would con- stitute a great advance in medical science.
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