The medical diseases of Egypt. Part 1 / by F.M. Sandwith.

  • Sandwith, F. M. (Fleming Mant), 1853-1918.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical diseases of Egypt. Part 1 / by F.M. Sandwith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    3°8 Since then I have had many other sections cut for me which have been examined by experts, but unfortunately nothing of pathological interest was revealed. The absence of cord degen¬ eration in these cases was due to the fact that the patients had either had pellagra for too short a time, say one year or less, or that, though they had suffered from pellagra for three or more years, the clinical signs of the disease were not very far advanced. In other words, spinal cord degeneration as dis¬ covered by the microscope is a comparatively late lesion in the disease. Experiments on poultry.—Lombroso’s experiments proved that birds, when fed on damaged maize, could die in a few months of acute pellagra, and further researches have been repeated since 1899 by Dr. Ceni in Italy. He finds that when poultry are fed on bad maize they show the first symptoms of the illness at the beginning of the spring season. The symptoms decline in the height of summer, sometimes recur slightly in autumn, and again remain quiescent during the winter. This autumn recrudescence in Italy is interesting, because it corres¬ ponds with the autumn eruption sometimes seen in men in Egypt. The symptoms in poultry are: diarrhoea, which is sometimes bloody, gradual loss of feathers which in some cases is almost complete, a characteristic erythema of the skin, and rapid emaciation, causing some of the birds to lose more than half their own weight. During the second half of summer the birds gradually improve, lose their diarrhoea and eruption, and regain to some extent their weight and feathers, so that towards the end of November their appearance is normal, in spite of the continuance of the same bad food. The hens die at various periods between one and four years, and it would seem pro¬ bable that those which live longest are more likely to show symptoms similar to chronic pellagra in man. The weight of the hens before death declines from about 1700 to about 810 grammes. At autopsies of the acute cases, there is general atrophy of the muscles, congestion of all the internal organs and chronic enteritis. In some cases there is, in addition, an acute adhesive fibrinous pericarditis. A culture made from some of these cases in Raulin’s solution showed Aspergillus fumigatus.