"On the influence of thyroid feeding and of various foods and of small amounts of food upon poisoning by aceto-nitril"

Abstract

One of the current theories of the functions of the thyroids is that these organs neutralize certain poisons occurring in the body; these poisons are purely hypothetical, and, so far as the author is aware, no one has yet reported experiments in which it has been shown that the thyroid can render a poison harmless. In the present experiments it was found that mice, to which thyroid had been fed for a few days, were markedly resistant to acetonitril; such mice recovered from the effects of ten to eleven times the ordinarily fatal dose of acetonitril. No such increased resistance to hydrocyanic acid or nitroprussiate of soda was caused by the thyroid feeding. Thyroidectin had an effect opposite to that of the thyroid, i. e., it increased the susceptibility of mice to acetonitril, but this effect was not greater than that of dry normal blood and was less than that of peptone. Feeding with parathyroids had an effect opposite to that of thyroid, i. e., it caused the mice to become more susceptible to acetonitr...