Lectures on auto-intoxication in disease; or, Self-poisoning of the individual - 1894 - PREFACE - IN placing this translation of Professor Bonchards Lect res on Auto-Intoxication in Disease before my medical brethren, I feel that I am performing a service highly useful to the profession. No apology is reqilired from me, unless it be for tlie failures on my part to render fluently into English the meaning of the French test. I have tried, as far as possible, to give a literal and a readable translation. Bouchard deals, in his Auto-In toxication, with subjects of every-day interest to the medical practitioner. Alany of tlie facts therein alluded to can no longer be ignored. Pntrefactive processes in the intestinal canal and tlie development of physiological and pathological alkaloids play an important par3 in many diseased processes until lately unknown or misunderstood. These lectures may, therefore, be regarded as an inquiry into the operation of poisons introduced from witllout or generated within the body of man, and the part they play in health and disease. No subject commands R greater interest none demnnds more serious study. Death frequently carries off in a few hours or days individuals who are in the prime of life and in apparent good health, and at whose post-mortem the most careful examination fails to reveal alterations of structure such as can explain the fatal stroke. Epidemics, not of a specific character, but traceable to poisoned water or food, have unexpectedly appeared in certain neighbor-Iloods or members of a marriage party liave died without much warning, death being attributed, and very properly, to some article of diet partaken of at the wedding-feast. These are the cases that have aro iscd public opinion and awakened professional interest in a subject toward the elucidation of which the pathological chemist has vied with the bacteriologist. The investigations of Selmi, Brieger, Prrsteur, Frankel, Hankin, Martin, and Bouchard, not to mention others, have sl own how disease may depend upon the presence in the system of substances capable of combining with acids to form chemical salts, and which correspond to inorganic and vcgetable bases. It was to these substances that the Italian toxicologist, Selmi, gave the name of ptomaines,-by which is meant chemical compounds basic in character, and formed by the action of bacteria upon organic matter. It is owing to these basic properties and their resemblance to vegetable alkaloids that ptomaines are sometimes spoken of as putrefactive or vegetable alkaloids,-the term leucomaines, or animal alkaloids, being reserved for those basic substances resulting from tissue metabolism in the body. Without discussing the question as to whether ptomaines are poisonous or not,-for Bouchard in these pages confines himself rather to thc general action of animal poisons than to s designation of them,-it is sufficient to state that a11 ptomaines are not poisonous. Some are quite inert. Brieger restricts the term ptomaine to the non-poisonous basic products, whilst those that are poisonous he calls toxins. Ptomaines contain nitrogen, and in this respect they resemble vegetable alkaloids... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.