Date of Award

6-1950

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Medical

First Advisor

Walter Zeit

Second Advisor

G. Kasten Tallmadge

Third Advisor

Joseph Kuzma

Abstract

The diseases of the lung which are associated with working in certain dusty atmospheres have been recognised for centuries, but only slowly has there been a development of awareness of the causal relationship between the disease and the dusts inhaled. This group of diseases, the pneumonoconioses, has resisted the best efforts to understand or to combat. While bacterial diseases of the lung have been dramatically reduced, these diseases, characterized pathologically by relatively slowly growing nodules of fi­brous connective tissue, have come to be considered in medicine with the same attitude of pessimism as are the malignancies. The major emphasis has come to center around prevention by elimination of the responsible dusts, a problem relegated to the industrial engineer.

Despite an intensive research effort over the last quarter of a century, very little of the actual pathogenetic mechanism or pneumoconiosis has been revealed. The most widely accepted concept is that a slowly soluble toxin, usually considered to be silicic acid, is liberated by the inhaled dusts which are most often quartz bearing, and that this either damages the normal tissues, or in some way, as yet not understood, induces fibrous tissue proliferation. There is in the field of silicosis study an attitude born of this exhaustion of original thought which offers a ready invitation to all investigators to propose their theories no matter how bizarre they may appear. Even with this opportunity, few original and ingenious ideas have appeared. The ideas or Collis, Gye and Purdy, Jones, and Fallon belong in this category. However, all of these ideas have failed to satisfy the persistent student of the disease. Accordingly, the invitation remains open.

In the last decade no theory as to the pathogenesis of the pneumoconioses has been presented which equals in attractiveness that proposed by Evans and Zeit. They suggest that only those substances which are piezoelectric, that is, capable of developing polarity when pressure is applied to them, are able to initiate the fibrous proliferation which is seen in pneumoconiosis. This idea, as stated by the sponsors, may have application to many diseases encountered in the aging process, for it is a principle involved in the basic phenomenology of all fibrous tissue development. It is the purpose of this paper to investigate this idea more fully, and to determine whether it explains aspects or the problem which have not been satisfied by the current concepts.

Download

Share

COinS

Restricted Access Item

Having trouble?