Barium: A Cause of the Loco-Weed DiseaseCrawford, Albert C. (Albert Cornelius)
Science
Barium: A Cause of the Loco-Weed Disease
Crawford, Albert C. (Albert Cornelius)
Astragalus earlei; Barium
A rabbit weighing 1,545 grams was fed on November 15, 1907, with a
preparation made in a similar manner, save that the plant was not
extracted with water before digestion. On the next day it weighed 1,517
grams and on November 19, 1,361 grams. The following day the weight was
1,318 grams; on November 21, 1,233 grams, and on the next day 1,162
grams. The animal died during the night, and the autopsy was made the
following morning.
The animal was greatly emaciated and the subcutaneous fat had almost all
disappeared. The mesenteric vessels were dilated, but the intestines
were not dilated. The peritoneal cavity was normal. The kidneys were
perhaps a little injected, and measured 3 cm. in length. The lungs were
normal. The left ventricle was contracted and the rest of the heart
relaxed. The liver was normal and the spleen apparently normal. The
stomach walls were dark, owing to decomposition. No ulcers were seen.
The suprarenals were perhaps a little enlarged. The examination of the
brain was negative, and no clots were found.
A similar digestion from 200 grams of the same dried plant was then
ashed and the ash treated with acetic acid and freed from acid by
evaporation on the bath. The ash which was insoluble in water was ground
up into a fine paste and the whole was fed to a rabbit weighing 992
grams. This animal died in forty minutes, showing the characteristic
symptoms seen in acute cases already described. In the autopsy the lungs
and other organs seemed perfectly normal macroscopically. The stomach
walls, however, were reddened and ecchymotic, and the mesenteric vessels
were dilated.
On January 8, 1908, a similar digestion of the same batch was treated
with a few drops of sulphuric acid to remove the barium, and the
filtrate was then treated with lead carbonate to remove the sulphuric
acid. After careful filtering, H_{2}S was passed into the solution and
after concentration was fed in one dose on January 9, 1908, to a rabbit.
The following morning the rabbit had gained in weight. On January 14
this animal weighed 30 grams more than its initial weight.
The residue of this plant after such a digestion, examined by the
Hillebrand method, showed no weighable amount of barium, so that it can
be seen that barium in relatively large amount was found in the plant
itself, but not after the digestion. It must therefore have been the
aqueous digestion which produced the characteristic symptoms. The
examination of this fluid for barium might, however, be misleading, as
the large amount of proteids would unquestionably interfere with the
determination of this amount of barium, unprotected by other salts and
silica, so that this side of the investigation was not pursued. Control
feedings with an emulsion of one-half gram each of pepsin and pancreatin
proved inactive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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