Toxicology

TOXICOLOGY (from the Greek toxikon - poison and logos - science), the discipline that studies diseases arising from the effect on the organism of various harmful substances (resp. poisons). Just as the participation of a microbe in the pathological process makes it infectious, the participation of a poison makes it toxic and subject to toxicological investigation. The methodological features of this investigation are connected with the study of both the physicochemical properties of the poison (and the medium poisoned by it) and the changes that occur in the organism under the influence of the poison, and the changes undergone by the poison in the organism. In these tasks, T. approaches physicochemical and physiological disciplines, while the striving for therapeutic effect on the poisoned organism brings it closer to experimental therapy; the most outstanding successes of the latter have been achieved precisely in the treatment of either infections or poisonings. Special practical significance of toxicological knowledge was obtained first of all due to the necessity, connected with the requirements of judicial procedure, to recognize diseases caused by poisonings. At the beginning of the 19th century appeared the famous, still cited guide to toxicology by Orfila (Orfila), which is mainly a guide to forensic T. The same character was later possessed by the major guides that appeared by Tardieu and partly by Gussemann (Gussemann). In connection with the predominant forensic-medical significance of T., for many years it was taught only in the course of forensic medicine. By the middle of the 19th century, with the development of experimental physiology, experimental T. also began to develop, to which the research of the French physiological school, and especially the works of the famous Claude Bernard, contributed extremely. An outstanding representative of experimental T. in Russia in the middle of the 19th century was the forensic medic E. Pelikan. Along with experimental T., comparative T. also arose, studying the features of one or another toxic process in different types of organisms. The extraordinary development of the experimental direction contributed to the rapprochement and often coincidence of the tasks of experimental T. and experimental pharmacology, which first in Germany and then in Russia led to the creation of special departments teaching these disciplines together, but with a predominance in teaching of a pharmacotherapeutic orientation (the latter is also the case today in medical institutions of the USSR). The largest pharmacologists-toxicologists were Kobert, Lewin, and in recent times Flury and Starkenstein (Flury, Starkenstein). The named scientists are authors of guides to T. If until the first half of the 19th century the main subject of toxicological study was substances of plant and mineral origin, then in recent decades with the successes of organic chemistry, the study of products of organic synthesis has gained great importance. Along with this, the study of experimental T. of poisons of bacterial and animal origin should be noted, which brings T. closer to the doctrine of intoxications in general. The intensive development of chemical and other types of industry has caused the practical necessity of studying the types of poisonings that arise or may arise in one or another production process, and has led to the isolation of professional, resp. industrial, toxicology. The main features of this branch of T. are connected with the necessity of studying the production process with all its complex and diverse factors, which is caused by the striving to rationally change the production process in the direction of its detoxification. This task is carried out in the USSR by special institutes (institutes for the study of professional diseases, institutes of pathology and occupational hygiene, etc.), organized after the October Revolution in the largest production centers of the country, having toxicological, and partly clinical, departments. A feature of the experimental research of this trend is the study of the long-term effect on the organism of small amounts of poison, the combined effect on the organism of various poisons, changes in the body's resistance to other harmful factors, etc. The application in the war of 1914-18 of combat poisonous substances led to the isolation of military T., the tasks of which have much in common with the tasks of professional T. Finally, it should be mentioned the still not sufficiently defined, but emerging in the USSR branch of clinical T. Undoubtedly, the isolation of the clinic of poisonings is as urgent as the recent isolation of the clinic of infectious diseases, and the new clinical discipline should also be based on experimental T., just as the infectious clinic is based on microbiology. With the comparatively inadequate training of the modern physician in T., the treatment of poisonings is often accompanied by major errors. In recent years there has been experience in compiling guides to the clinic of professional poisonings (I. G. Gelman), to the clinic of military poisonings (V. I. Glinchikov), while in general clinical guides, both Soviet and foreign, the clinic of poisonings is usually given only a small chapter. The diversity of the practical significance of T. hinders the organization of a comprehensive study of its problems. For the first time, such an organization was undertaken by the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (VIEM), which in 1933 created in its structure a toxicological department with a number of departments, including a clinical one. Teaching in medical institutions of the USSR of general T. is conducted in the course of pharmacology, military T. - in the course of chemical defense; industrial T. has been introduced as an independent subject in the curriculum of the chemical-pharmaceutical faculty of the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute. There are no independent scientific toxicological societies (since 1932, at the Leningrad Society of Physiologists named after Sechenov, a section of T. has been operating, uniting in Leningrad toxicologists of various specialties). There are no special journals on T. either in the USSR or abroad, and works on T. are published in various journals (mainly in pharmacological, physiological, clinical, hygienic and forensic-medical). The growing need to collect materials on T. in humans has however led to the fact that the German Pharmacological Society since 1927 publishes the 'Collection of Poisoning Cases'. A similar publication is now being undertaken by VIEM.