PROGRESSIVE PERNICIOUS ANEMIA. IDIOPATHIC 



ANEMIA. 



Definition. Causes, obscure, faulty diet, hygiene, microbes, glycerine, 

 pyrogallic acid, haamoglobin, deranged sanguification, parasitisms. Symp- 

 toms, of ansemia of obscure origin. Treatment as for anaemia, special 

 measures, for intestinal fermentations, dietetic. 



Definition. Ansemia which is without any pre-existing appre- 

 ciable cause. 



Causes. As in the corresponding disease in man the real start- 

 ing point of pernicious anaemia is unknown. Faults in diet and 

 in general hygiene have been adduced, and while in Berne this 

 appears to be sustained , in Ireland, in the poorest classes, the disease 

 is little known, and in Montreal, it find its victims largely in a 

 class of well to do artisans (Osier. ) In the domestic animal it is 

 described on all soils, and on the most varied dietary (Bouleyand 

 Reynal). Zschokke and Friedberger and Frohner in cases oc- 

 curring enzootically in stables, found a minute bacillus in the pa- 

 tients, which would remove these cases into the ILst of sympto- 

 matic ansemia. The same is true of the anaemia (Surra) of horses 

 and mules in India and Siberia, in which Evans, Burke, Steele 

 and Ignatovsky, found a motile spirilloid organism which destroys 

 the red globules. Other forms that are apparently purely idio- 

 pathic have been attributed to a failure in the cytogenic processes 

 in the bone marrow e.specially. Back of this we know only of 

 the various debilitating causes in food, hygiene, building, loca- 

 tion, work, etc., operating on a specially susceptible system, in 

 which, once started, the morbid process tends to perpetuate itself 

 and increase. 



Ponfick induced anaemia experimentally by the intravenous in- 

 jection of glycerine, pyrogallic acid, solutions of haemoglobin, 

 etc., which dissolve the blood globules. This suggests the 

 probable pathogenesis by the production of unidentified blood 

 solvents in cases of deranged sanguification, but it still leaves us 

 in the dark as to the exact seat of such derangements (liver, 

 blood glands, bone marrow, etc.) and as to the cause, parasitic or 

 otherwise, which determines such disorder. Pathological investi- 



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