CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM IN ACUTE PHOSPHORUS POISONING

Abstract

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Experimental Investigations. —Phosphorus was one of the poisons used by Nissl¹ in his classic studies of changes in the nerve cells of animals with experimental intoxications. Previous experiments had yielded no valid results because they were based on methods inadequate for the demonstration of nerve cell structures. Nissl found severe changes in nerve cells in rabbits that had been exposed to "subacute maximal intoxication" with phosphorus. There was severe dissolution of the tigroid material and pronounced shrinking of the whole cell. The photomicrographs that Nissl made of these cell changes after phosphorus poisoning have repeatedly been reproduced in later publications as good examples of "toxic changes" in the nerve cells. These experiments, important as they are from a historical point of view, have almost no significance for present day histopathology, since they are based only on a consideration of individual cells. Nissl himself drew attention