202 THE DISEASES OF THE PARATHYROID GLANDS 



the detoxicating function. The parathyroids would seem to furnish to the 

 blood-path a hormone which renders innocuous poisons that exist in the 

 body. Originally the thyroid gland was looked upon as the organ preparing 

 the poison (Vassale and Generali). Lately Pineles, Pfeiffer and Meyer, Oni 

 and Beste, Berkeley and Beebe, and most recently, especially Wiener, have 

 turned attention from the thyroid and have assumed that in the bodies of 

 animals with tetany there circulates a specific poison or one originating other- 

 wise in metabolic processes. 



It is impossible for me to enter intimately into the numerous experiments 

 that have been instituted for the establishment of the hypothesis. I would 

 mention only the most important. Pfei/er and Meyer state that in the sera 

 collected in the death agony, of seventeen dogs affected with tetany, they have 

 found in six a toxic principle which injured partially parathyroidectomized 

 mice, while the sera of normal dogs were inactive. The fact that animals with 

 tetany are very sensitive to the various procedures tends to make one sceptical 

 as to the value of these experiments. Ceni and Besta have tried to obtain 

 an immune serum, injecting the serum of totally ectomized dogs into rabbits 

 and goats, and reinjecting the sera of these into the tetanic dogs. Almost 

 regularly they cured the acute manifestations, although none of the animals 

 remained alive. H. Wiener followed a similar course for experimentation, 

 except that he used cats both for immunization and for treatment. In some 

 animals (not all) he succeeded in combating the tetanc symptoms per- 

 manently. The residual thyroid glands of these animals were examined and 

 found to contain no piece of parathyroid tissue. The assumption of Wiener 

 that in cats there are no accessory parathyroids must, in consideration of the 

 importance of such experiments, first be shown by painstaking investigations. 

 The doubt is increased by the statement of Wiener that in some experiments 

 also the injection of entirely normal serum permanently set aside the tetanic 

 symptoms. 



Although, up to the present, the detoxication theory of tetany cannot be 

 refuted, it does not seem to me to have been satisfactory. The assumption 

 of a detoxicating function has, up to the present, played a great role in the 

 pathology of all the ductless glands. However, it seems to me that up to the 

 present there does not exist a single fact that strictly demonstrates this 

 supposition. As with the other ductless glands, so with the parathyroids, 

 another supposition seems plausible, a supposition that was first suggested 

 by Rudinger and myself and then further developed, with modifications, by 

 Kahn and myself. 



The cardinal symptoms of tetany depend on increased excitability or 

 abnormal conditions of irritability of the nervous system. As to the seat 

 of the abnormal irritability we may say the following: Schiff had already 

 shown that in tetany tremors and spasms ceased after the section of the 

 peripheral nerves. Rudinger and / have repeated these experiments, and 



