The chemistry of nerve-degeneration / by F.W. Mott and W.D. Halliburton.

  • Frederick Walker Mott
Date:
1901
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The chemistry of nerve-degeneration / by F.W. Mott and W.D. Halliburton. 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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    very delicate one, especially in the presence of other organic substances. The great value and delicacy of the platinum test has been emphasised in the recent work of Gumprecht.^ Although our previous paper dealt j^rincipally with General Paralysis, we indicated that the presence of clioline in large quantities in the cerebro-spinal fluid is not characteristic of this disease ; we mentioned that in other diseases where great and evidently acute wasting of the brain tissue had occurred, choline was also present in excess in this fluid. Since the publication of our work, the subject has been taken up by Gumprecht and our observations have iDeen confirmed and extended by him. We stated that in the normal fluid choline was either absent or present in such small quantities that our tests were not sufficiently delicate to detect it. Gumprecht has shown that if sufflcient fluid is employed it is possible to demonstrate the presence of minute quantities of choline in it; but this is enormously increased not only in General Paralysis, but in many other diseases of the nervous system ; he directed Ins attention in jDarticular to acute diseases like meningitis. The presence of choline in the normal fluid is not devoid of physiological interest. It shows us that, under ordinary conditions, lecithin is in that condition of unstable chemical equilibrium which is indicated by the word metabolism. It is constantly breaking down, and being constantly built up afresh, and it is only in diseased conditions, in which the destructive side of metabolism preponderates over the constructive, that appreciable quantities of the products of its disintegration are present in cerebro-spinal fluid and blood. Physiological saline solution will extract a small amount of choline from perfectly normal nervous tissue at the ordinary temperature ; this is most apparent in situations where there is most activity, namely, in the grey matter. Within the last year or two, numerous observers! have shown this, and although they differ in opinion whether choline is the most important or abundant substance in such extracts, all are agreed on the main point as to its actual presence. In norinal blood much the same is true. In the work which we have done since the publication of our first pajjer we have devoted our attention to the blood rather than to the cerebro-spinal fluid. By concentrating large quantities of normal blood it is possible to show by the platinum test tlie jDresence of minute traces of choline; but in conditions in which extensive degenerative changes occur in the central or peripheral j^ortions of the nervous system, the amount is considerably increased, and its presence can be shown in small quantities of blood; such quantities of normal * Gumprecht, ‘ Verhandl. des Congr. fiir imiere Medicin,’ AViesbaden, 1900, p. 326. t Cleghorn, ‘ Journ. of the Boston Society of Medical Sciences,’ vol. 4, p. 239, 1900; Hunt, ‘ Proc. American Physiol. Society, American Journ. of Physiol.,’ vol. 3, p. xviii., 1900; Osborne and Vincent, ‘ Journ. of Physiol.,’ vol. 25, p. 283, 1900; AY. D. Halliburton, ibid., p. vii., 1900; also vol. 26, p. 229, 1901.
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