stefansson-wrangel-09-40-011

Volume 78 Number 25 CURRENT COMMENT 1967

discovered in India to be confined to women, even on good dietaries who observed the purdah life of indoor existence. Thus sunlight has once more been demonstrated to be the enemy of disease.

Current Comment

TARANTULA TOXICITY

Folk-lore abounds in stories of phenomenal manifestations which often fail to survive the test of critical examination. Accounts of unexpected occurrences or unusual symptoms often grow like rolling snowballs, adding to their size with each step in the course of progress. Small effects may become magnified into great ones; suspicions develop somehow into the dignity of probabilities or even real facts. New traditions seem to spring up from undiscovered sources. Something of the nature of such mystic influences may account for the prevalent belief in the extreme danger associated with the tarantula. The fatal bite of these terror-inspiring insects has been widely proclaimed, so that they are given a wide berth by those who recognize them. The poisonous properties of various species of spiders is admitted by competent investigators.¹ Many of the insects have poison-secreting glands which discharge into the jaws. But there is little doubt that the danger from some of them has been greatly exaggerated.² Von Fürth ³ considers that the bite of the historically famous Italian tarantula is able to cause no more than local inflammation, while the toxicologist Robert was unable to discover profoundly poisonous properties in the supposedly more dangerous Russian tarantula. Now the American tarantula, Eurypelma steindachneri, a species reaching the formidable looking adult size of more than 2 inches in length, has been exonerated from the reputation long attaching to it, Baerg⁴ of the University of Arkansas has subjected both animals and man to attack by the fangs of active tarantulas. Although the accounts do not give the impression that such encounters are painless performances, they are put in the category of bee sting in severity rather than into the class of more menacing toxins. Even bees may produce fatalities; yet they are rarely classed among the greater dangers to life.

MEAT AND SCURVY

The fact that scurvy is not peculiarly prevalent among the peoples of the Far North living for the most part on animal food, who rarely have available those vegetable products which are prized as antiscorbutics, has been the subject of considerable discussion since the recent renewal of interest in a long known disease. Those investigators who have tested the protective

1. Faust, E. S.: Die tierischen Gifte, Braunschweig, 1906.

2. Wells, H. G.: Chemical Pathology, Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Company, 1920, p. 150.

3. Von Fürth, O.: Vergleichende chemische Physiologie der niederen Tiere, Jena, 1903.

4. Baerg, W. J.: Regarding the Habits of Tarantulas and the Effects of Their Poison, Scient. Mont. 14:482 (May) 1922.

power of meat against scurvy on the classic experimental animal, the guinea-pig, have almost without exception failed to demonstrate any antiscorbutic potency in muscle tissue. Against these findings stand the statements of Stefansson ¹ that scurvy was avoided during his arctic explorations by the use of large quantities of meat from freshly killed game, the tissue usually being eaten raw. The experimental investigations of Vedder ² of the U. S. Army at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, corroborate the previous guinea-pig tests in showing that the administration of considerable amounts of erythrocytes, voluntary muscle, heart muscle and bone all failed to prevent the development of scurvy, or even to prolong the depletion period. The antiscorbutic factor is not present in these tissues in appreciable quantity. On the other hand, various viscera—the liver, lungs, spleen and pancreas—as well as the brain evidently possess antiscorbutic powers, as has long been known for the liver in particular. This demonstration in respect to glandular organs may account for native customs among tribes who live chiefly on a meat diet. Many of them esteem the organs as dietary tidbits. Vedder states that when the plains Indian had been without game over a considerable period, he was accustomed to open the freshly killed bison and eat handfuls of raw liver. It is stated that the Eskimos make a special effort to secure the liver of the seal, and that when hunters had Apache Indians as guides, the usual bargain was for the guides to take all the insides of the deer, leaving the meat for the hunters. Perhaps the seemingly unusual customs become susceptible of a plausible explanation in the light of the newer knowledge of nutrition. Perhaps, further, the distinction between meat, in the sense of muscular tissues, and glandular organs such as the liver and kidney, has not always been made by those who have reported dietary habits in relation to human scurvy.

SUCCESSFUL FIRST AID

“In August, 1921, a miner at Shock, Ky., was rendered unconscious by electric shock. A fellow miner, trained in first aid, immediately administered the Schaefer method of artificial resuscitation and saved the man’s life.” This is one of several instances of successful first-aid treatment by fellow workmen recently published by the Bureau of Mines in a report of investigation. The report is a reminder that certain knowledge and practices regarding first aid should be more generally known by the public. Accidents occur frequently, when physicians are inaccessible, but when immediate assistance may be of the utmost importance, as shown in another instance in this report. In this case a comrade made a tourniquet of his suspenders and stopped a hemorrhage that would have been fatal if this immediate aid had not been rendered. These men had been trained in first aid, and with that training

1. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur: Original Observations on Scurvy, M. Rev. of Rev. 24: 257, 19IB; Observations oh Three Cases of Scurvy J. A. M. A, 71: 1715 (Nov. 23) 1918.

2. Vedder, E. B.: The Etiology of Scurvy, IV, Observations Concerning the Physiologic Action of the Antiscorbutic Vitaliment Mil. Surgeon 50:534 (May) 1922.

You may have seen this already.Did you Experience with Knight in [] the feeding of viscera - Hanes.

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