Abstract
The relation of calcium metabolism to jaundice has long been a matter of clinical observation. Changes in the bones following both cholemia and prolonged loss of bile are a matter of common knowledge.
More recent work by Walters 1 and Heyd 2 and others has put the therapy of jaundice by the intravenous injection of calcium chloride on a very firm clinical basis so that it is used as a routine in many clinics today. While the effect aimed at has generally been the decrease in the coagulation time of the blood as a preparation for surgical therapy, the results achieved have gone further than that, and it is without a doubt true that there is also a marked temporary detoxification produced by the intravenous injection of large amounts of calcium chloride.
The studies of Still 3 have shown clearly that it is the bile salts which are the offending factor in cholemia as the other elements of the bile are nontoxic.
Buchbinder and Kern 4 have shown that in animals and man the blood calcium tends to be rather low and Cantarow, Dodek and Gordon 5 have confirmed the early work showing a greater excretion of calcium in jaundice. Walters and Bowler 6 show that twice the amount of calcium salt injected intravenously may be required to raise the blood calcium to a given level in a patient with jaundice as in a normal person.
With these points in view the following series of experiments were undertaken. A 10% solution of bile salts was injected intraperitoneally into 4 dogs; to 3 it was administered intravenously, and the blood calcium determinations were made at short intervals thereafter.
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