PERNICIOUS ANÆMIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21932, 19 April 1933, Page 5

PERNICIOUS ANÆMIA

USE OF FISH’S LIVER, (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March 9. It has been reported by several workers that fish’s liver, unlike mammalian liver, was of no value in the treatment of pernicious anaemia. This matter (according to the report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research) was re-examined by the scientists at the Cambridge Research Station. The first two preparations proved useless, their nauseous taste limiting the daily dosage to too small an amount. The first was the liquor produced by freezing and thawing livers, and centrifuging the resulting mass. The second consisted of the residual tissue after the removal of fat and water with acetone. The preparation finally used was made by concentrating, in vacuo, an aqueous extract of minced livers, precipitating the active principle (along with gylcogen, bile salts, etc.) with 95 per cent, alcohol. The sticky precipitate was dried in vacuo, powdered, and fed in daily doses equivalent to 21b of liver. Livers of haddock, cod and whiting were used with equal success. The patients responded rapidly, and there seems no doubt that fish’s liver is as rich in the active principle ns mammalian liver.