Pink's disease

[saxy_jag]

When my uncle (now 65) was a baby, he was very ill with Pink's disease, which I've since found out is to do with mercury poisoning.

He came from a lower working class family and this was in the late 1940s, so how might he have come into contact with enough mercury to make him so ill he nearly died?

[anneasquith]

saxy, ive just googled it,,,,,,, very interesting thanks.

[Sqad]

Interesting topic.......Pink disease is now extinct and was mainly due to parents giving their babies teething powders which contained mercury. This was suspected by the medical profession as early as the early 1940´s but was difficult to prove. Chemists isolated mercury in the urine of these children and the association of mercury in the teething powders was established. This was in the post World War 2 period and now Pinks Disease is extinct in children......

Perhaps Lazygun or the Prof can put some meat on my answer.

[saxy_jag]

The teething powders figures. It's the sort of thing his parents would have given him and the time is about right - he was born at the end of the WW2.

Eddie, we're not a hatting town at all. The main industries at the time were hosiery and shoes.

[anneasquith]

hi saxy, does he have any lasting affects ?

[saxy_jag]

Difficult to say, Anne. He's never been exactly brawny and doesn't seem to have inherited the family tall gene, although as a younger man he could certainly stick up for himself. He trained as a truck driver in the army and carried on driving when he left - not through ill-health but because he got fed up with army life.

He developed type 1 diabetes in his late twenties, but we're not sure if that's anything to do with the Pink's. More likely because he liked his booze too much.

[theprof]

Oh dear, I'm afraid for my sins I can claim to be an expert on Pink's Disease. Why? Well a few years ago, I was admitted to hospital during the evening with a suspected heart-attack. Due to lack of beds in the cardiac unit, I was admitted to a respiratory ward.

The following morning, the ward consultant, a respiratory specialist, came around with a dozen medical students. We both knew each other (the nursing staff had even put my academic title on the nameplate at the head of my bed with great glee!) but he took great delight in scrutinising my medical records and announced to the medical students that I had succumbed to Pink's Disease as a child. He asked them if they knew what it was and after they stared blankly at him, he told them he expected them to return with the answer the following day during the ward rounds. They all did so (no doubt thanks to Dorland et al) and I’m pleased I helped a little with their medical training

[theprof]

Saxy-jag, I’m in no doubt that your uncle succumbed to Pink’s Disease as a result of mercurial teething powders. I’m from the same era (although a little younger) and I’m afraid that although the symptoms of the disease were encountered by virtually all GP’s in the forties and fifties, the association between teething powder and Pink’s Disease took many years to document in the medical literature. In essence, the medical profession at the time dismissed the link for many years which resulted in great hardship for the children at the time. I was gravely ill for many months as a child. Just like your uncle. I’m from a working-class background, but I can tell you that the disease knew no class discrimination as I’ve come across people from a similar background to mine to people of a considerably more affluent upbringing who have had the disease. Why? Well it’s because mercurial teething powders were heavily promoted in the popular press at the time ranging from newspapers to magazines for women. As a result, there is no documented class division in Pink’s disease sufferers.

The symptoms of Pink’s Disease are a variant of conventional mercury poisoning. However, discriminating between one and the other are easy for a competent, knowledgeable physician.

I’ve studied Pink’s disease for many years and even contributed articles on the subject to medical journals in the UK and US. Nowadays in the western world, it is virtually extinct, but I’m afraid that it’s still not unknown in developing countries.

[theprof]

Incidentally, Pink's Disease is more often known as Acrodynia nowadays.

[theprof]

saxy-jag, there is no link between type 1 diabetes and and acrodynia

[Marijn]

Why is it still not unknown in developing countries?

[anneasquith]

the prof, what a coincidence. and thoroughly enjoyed your first hand account of the disease, can you recall what the " teething powder " was called. ?

[theprof]

notafish, it's because calomel teething powders are still being used in some developing countries. Advice from WHO and similar bodies remains unheeded

[theprof]

anneasquith, I think mine was Steedman's Powder. If I remember rightly, it contained around 27% mercurous chloride (calomel).
However, a parent only had to walk into any high street chemist to have the stuff made up from calomel powder and inert filler on the spot. It was often cheaper that way.Those were back in the days of when chemist shops looked more like laboratories with their multi-coloured jars and bottles labelled in latin.

[wolf63]

saxy - thanks for your post, it was not an ailment that I had heard of.

theprof - hopefully your suspected heart attack was not a heart attack.

[Sqad]

Pink Disease.

[theprof]

Sqad, technically you are correct in that it is indeed Pink Disease. Emil Feer first gave acrodynia the name in a paper published in 1925. However, over the years it's also been referred to as Feer's Disease, Selter's Disease, Bilderbeck's Disease and I fear that in many quarters, Pink has been turned into yet another eponym.

I certainly encounter clinicians in the UK and the USA who still refer to it as if it's an eponym just like the OP.

[theprof]

wolf63, I'm afraid it wasn't a suspected heart attack. It turned out to be the real thing although fortunately very mild.

MrsProf took over my case from the original consultant appointed as she was then a cardiology reader at the teaching hospital and issued instructions that I was to stay in hospital for a week. I never saw her again that week but she arranged for me to be dragged around the hospital for everything from ECG's to nuclear medicine investigations. She laughed like a drain when I eventually got out.

I've now developed friendships with a number of her senior clinical professors for obvious reasons!

[saxy_jag]

This has all been really interesting. The reason I queried the diabetes is because my mum always described my uncle's illness as being a 'wasting disease'. I don't know about that, but his other sister and his brother both recall him losing a lot of weight and being in hospital for a long time.

I should say that, diabetes aside (including a toe amputation and subsequent MRSA), he is quite well and active and has been for as long as I remember.

[Marijn]

Thanks the prof. Are these teething powders made by Johnson and Johnson or Nestle, as I've heard that these companies are unethically selling stuff to the developing world? Mind you, I suppose there's loads of unethical companies.