Blastophoric Effect of Chronic Lead Poisoning. 157 

 Summary. 



In this series an increase in the euglobulin fraction appears to 

 run parallel with a positive Wassermann reaction and vice versa. 

 But what the exaet normal limits of the euglobulin content are 

 cannot be determined with certainty from this small series of 

 cases. Not until results from a much larger number of cases are 

 obtained can any positive statement be made. We can only claim 

 that the findings are most suggestive. We are continuing the 

 work along these lines on blood as well as on spinal fluids. 



93 (1025) 



The blastophthoric effect of chronic lead poisoning: Breeding 

 experiments. Preliminary report. 



By Carl Vernon Weller, A.B., M.D. {by invitation.) 



[From the Department of Pathology, University of Michigan.] 



There have been frequent clinical observations of the apparent 

 deleterious effect upon the germ plasm exerted by chronic lead 

 poisoning. A majority of these cases have been found in female 

 lead workers and in these it might be supposed that abortions, 

 stillbirths and early deaths of infants were due as much to the 

 toxic effect of lead during intra-uterine development as to an 

 actual injury to the germ plasm. In the smaller number of 

 instances in which the male parent alone was poisoned, the result- 

 ing sterility without impotency, the stillbirths and the early 

 deaths of offspring are difficult to explain unless they are due to 

 blastophthoria. The work of Stockard and of Cole and Davis 

 has shown that alcohol has a similar effect. In a recent report 

 which appeared as the present series of experiments was being 

 concluded Cole and Bachhuber have demonstrated that the 

 offspring of male rabbits poisoned by lead as well as of male fowls 

 similarly poisoned are of distinctly lower vitality than the offspring 

 of normal males. 



In attempting to determine experimentally whether blasto- 

 phthoria occurs in chronic lead poisoning, guinea pigs were given 

 repeated weighed doses of commercial white lead in capsules by 



