PROGRESSIVE PERNICIOUS ANÆMIA. IDIOPATHIC ANÆMIA.
Definition. Causes, obscure, faulty diet, hygiene, microbes, glycerine, pyrogallic acid, hæmoglobin, deranged sanguification, parasitisms. Symptoms, of anæmia of obscure origin. Treatment as for anæmia, special measures, for intestinal fermentations, dietetic.
Definition. Anæmia which is without any pre-existing appreciable cause.
Causes. As in the corresponding disease in man the real starting point of pernicious anæmia 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 (Osler.) In the domestic animal it is described on all soils, and on the most varied dietary (Bouley and Reynal). Zschokke and Friedberger and Fröhner in cases occurring enzootically in stables, found a minute bacillus in the patients, which would remove these cases into the list of symptomatic anæmia. The same is true of the anæmia (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 idiopathic have been attributed to a failure in the cytogenic processes in the bone marrow especially. Back of this we know only of the various debilitating causes in food, hygiene, building, location, work, etc., operating on a specially susceptible system, in which, once started, the morbid process tends to perpetuate itself and increase.
Ponfick induced anæmia experimentally by the intravenous injection of glycerine, pyrogallic acid, solutions of hæmoglobin, 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 investigation has enabled us to differentiate, according to their respective causes, a number of diseases (distomatosis, lung worms, ankylostomiasis, internal acariasis, chronic trichinosis, strongyliasis, etc.,) which were formerly classed as anæmias, and it seems altogether probable that the onward progress of medicine will enable us to go farther in the same direction and to allot the remaining unclassed anæmias to their proper etiological places. Some may be unrecognized helminthiasis, others microbian disorders, and still others, disorders in nutrition and sanguification from different causes.
The Symptoms are those of other forms of anæmia, but being more obscure in origin and therefore less open to corrective treatment, it is more likely to grow to an extreme development and fatal issue. The weak pulse, irritable heart, debility, unsteady walk with the hind limbs, hurried breathing and sweating under exercise, watery, puffy eyes, dropsies in limbs and dependent parts of the body, progressive emaciation, and weakness are even more marked than in symptomatic anæmia.
The treatment is in the main as for the other form alike in its hygienic and medicinal bearing. In man recoveries have taken place under arsenic combined with the iron. Arseniate of potash and ferrum redactum in pill form, or tincture of chloride of iron, and Fowler’s solution in food or water, continued for a length of time. Phosphated pepsin, and peroxide of hydrogen have seemed to do well in some instances, and phosphorated oil is another resort. W. Hunter attributes idiopathic anæmia to toxins derived from microbes in the alimentary canal, as Sir Andrew Clark ascribes chlorosis to a similar cause. He prescribes beta-naphthol as the least soluble and best antiseptic, in a dose of 5 grains daily in mucilage for man (1 drachm for horse or ox). Hunter further found that a farinaceous diet protected the globules against destruction while a nitrogenous diet favored this. It may be noted that long ago Delafond attributed anæmia in animals to the extension of the use of artificial fodders of the natural order leguminosæ which are rich in nitrogen.