232 WARFIELT) T. LONGCOPE AND GEORGE M. MACKENZIE 



concluded from their work that the distribution of histamin was very wide 

 and that the toxic action of peptone and of the proteoses as well as some 

 of the effects obtained from the injection of the pituitary body are de- 

 pendent upon histamin. Koessler, however, has shown that though hista- 

 min occurs in Witte's peptone, it is not responsible entirely for the toxic 

 action of Witte's peptone. 



The extremely toxic action of many of these diamins and their deriva- 

 tion from proteins on the one hand and the readiness with which toxic 

 substances may be formed in blood serum in vitro on the other, has natur- 

 ally led to the suggestion that under certain conditions, such poisons may 

 be formed in the human body and be responsible for acute intoxications or 

 chronic illnesses. 



It has been shown, for instance, that histidin which occurs in the final 

 splitting of protein may, by the action of bacteria, be partially converted 

 into histamin. But at the present moment there is little direct evidence 

 to indicate that such substances occur in pathological states in the human 

 being or are responsible for any definite group of symptoms. One of the 

 intoxications that has been written of and talked of for many years is 

 the so-called ptomain poisoning, and it has now been shown that spoiled 

 foods, which have caused widespread intoxication, may contain sub- 

 stances that give reactions similar to some of the diamins. Thus, Blank- 

 enhorn, Harmon, and Hanzlik have described the poisoning of a group of 

 persons by canned codfish, which they believed was not due to bacterial 

 contamination of this food, but dependent upon a chemical substance that 

 they could obtain from the salted codfish and which gave pharmacological 

 reactions that made them feel that it was probably histamin. 



The experiments of Whipple, Stone, Bernheim, Rodenbaugh, Cook, 

 and McQuarrie upon experimental intestinal obstruction in dogs seem to 

 show that under these conditions there is formed a poison particularly 

 in the upper intestinal tract which they identify as a proteose and which 

 produces, upon injection into normal animals, a condition simulating the 

 shock following experimental high intestinal obstruction. One of the 

 characteristics of this proteose intoxication in animals is a sudden in- 

 crease of the non-protein nitrogen of the blood together with a decrease in 

 the phthalein excretion in the urine. This is not associated .with anatom- 

 ical lesions in the kidney and may result from the injection of the pro- 

 teose substance obtained from the intestinal loops of dogs subjected to 

 experimental intestinal obstruction. In man, many of the symptoms of 

 high intestinal obstruction are much the same as those observed in the 

 artificial obstruction produced in animals, and Tileston and Comfort first 

 noted in cases of acute intestinal obstruction, that the non-protein nitro- 

 gen of the blood might be elevated to as much as 150 mgm. to 169 mgm. 

 per 100 c.c. With the relief of the obstruction in two cases that recovered, 

 the non-protein nitrogen of the blood returned to normal. One similar 



