Serum-therapy in the light of the most recent investigations / by Frederick W. Stetson.
- Stetson, Frederick W.
- Date:
- 1902
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Serum-therapy in the light of the most recent investigations / by Frederick W. Stetson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![toxine, that the process in the heart is similar both in symptoms and in pathological appearances to that found in human diphtheria. Different observers as far back as 1878 found marked changes in the nervous structure of the heart and in the muscle itself, clue to the absorption of the diphtheritic toxine. It is a significant fact that, according to McCullom, the ma- jority of the diphtheria patients who died from heart complications at the Boston City Hospital, had been ill three or four days before antitoxine was adminis- tered; and in consequence the bacilli of diphtheria had had sufficient time to generate toxine enough to cause degeneration of the nervous structures of the heart. There was not the slightest evidence, either from the clinical study of the cases, or from the re- sult of autopsies, that antitoxine had any injurious effect upon either the muscle of the heart or its ner- vous structures. Albuminuria is another of the alleged dangers from the use of antitoxine. This, however, is also a sym]3- tom long recognized as occurring in diphtheria. An analysis of the urine in 173 cases treated at the Boston City Hospital was made before and after the adminis- tration of antitoxine. In these 173 cases it was found that in 99 instances albumin was absent both before and after this agent was used, without doubt due to the fact that the antitoxine was given before enough toxine had been generated to cause albuminuria. In 33 cases, the albumin was about the same after the use of antitoxine as before it; in 25, it was dimin- ished; in 16, it was slightly increased, but not to a sufficient extent to cause any special anxiety. This would not justify the conclusion that the albuminuria was due to the antitoxine and not to the disease (34).](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21167606_0036.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
