The use of a colon-streptococcus anti-serum as a pre-operation measure

Abstract

The work here presented is a part of the elaborate research into the causation and treatment of the so-called functional psychoses, made at the State Hospital at Trenton, New Jersey, under the direction of Dr. Henry A. Cotton.

More than thirty years ago, while performing autopsies upon the bodies of patients dying in the hospital for the insane at Chicago, Dr. Albert J. Ochsner 1 noted that there was present in an unusually large number very marked pathological changes in the colon, and occasionally in the other viscera. He called the attention of the authorities to these findings but was told that even if present, these lesions had nothing whatever to do with the psychosis, which was a personality or psychic disorder, entirely separate and bearing no relation whatsoever to any physical defects which might be present. In spite of his protestations this opinion prevailed. Undoubtedly many other pathologists and surgeons, both here and abroad, have noted the striking frequency with which extensive pathological changes in the abdominal portion of the alimentary canal and elsewhere are to be noted among patients suffering with the so-called “functional” psychoses.

Impressed with the very definite clinical improvements which he had obtained by removing dental and tonsillar foci of infection among these patients, and believing that there must be additional sources for the very evident toxemia among those who made little or no improvement after the removal of these oral infections, Dr. Cotton invited me to conduct a surgical research which should furnish evidence as to the presence or absence of such abdominal infection. This work is now entering upon its fourth year. The pathology is present and the favorable clinical results following its removal are already rather widely known.