Vanadium.
Vanadium. The Metal. V. (A. W. 5l.2). Trituration. (Burnett used the
“soluble ammonium salt.”)Clinical.─
Addison’s disease. Atheroma. Fatty
degeneration. Innutrition.
Characteristics.─
Burnett (Fifty Reasons) tells how he came to use Van.
through reading the result of some experiments on animals in which the Salts of Vanadium
produced “true cell destruction, the pigment escaping, the liver being hit
hardest.” Burnett had at the time a case of “fatty liver, atheroma of the
arteries, much pain corresponding to the course of the basilar artery, large, deeply
pigmented patches on forehead, profound adynamia.” Van.
restored the patient, who was seventy, and at eighty he was “hale and hearty.”
Marc Jousset (L’Art Méd., lxxxix. 217) tells of
experiments with salts of Van., chiefly the
meta-vanadate of sodium, by Lyonnet and others. Animals poisoned by intravenous injections
rapidly develop Cheyne-Stokes respiration; with little or no action on circulation or blood.
These observers gave Vanadates to two hundred patients
(suffering from tuberculosis, chlorosis, chronic rheumatism, neurasthenia, &c.), and
produced in nearly all cases increased appetite, strength, and weight. The amount of urea
was also increased. They regard Van. as “an
energetic excitant of nutrition,” and probably an oxydant stimulating organic
combustion. The dose was 2-5 mgr. in twenty-four hours, and only on three separate days in
the week.
Relations.─
Compare:
Fatty degeneration, Phos., Ars. Addison’s disease, Adren. Tuberculosis, Tub., Bac.® 2000
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