STUDIES ON PORPHYRIA

Abstract

The clinical and pathologic aspects of porphyria were extensively reviewed by Mason, Courville and Ziskind¹in 1933. In the German literature the chemistry of porphyria has recently received considerable attention.²In the American literature recent papers by Dobriner and his associates,³Watson⁴and Watson and Clarke⁵have added important new data. The recent monograph by Waldenström⁶has clarified the diagnostic criteria, the familial occurrence and much of the symptomatology of acute porphyria. The first two papers of the present series of studies⁷have further introduced the basic chemical nature of the porphyrins and have presented evidence that porphyria may be a persistence of fetal pyrrole metabolism. For these reasons it is not considered necessary in this paper to go deeply into either the clinical or the chemical aspects that have been dealt with in the literature. The present report of a case concerns what is commonly