Pulmonary asbestosis: report of a case (1930)

This 1930 article reports one case: a 58-year-old man who reached the Mayo Clinic in May 1929 with severe heart disease and died in hospital. The author described it as apparently the first case of pulmonary asbestosis reported from the United States. At autopsy the lungs showed very marked fibrosis, first recorded as silicosis. After lung tissue was dissolved in nitric acid, fragments judged to be certainly asbestos were recovered. Golden-brown oval bodies were thought to be fibers in a late stage of breaking down. Too few silica particles were found to explain the fibrosis. After the death, business associates said the man had worked in an asbestos mine in South America, drilling asbestos-bearing rock. The author presumed the drilling was before 1898, at least thirty-two years before death, and called this a case of at least seventeen years' duration; no fiber type is named. Death was attributed to hypertensive heart disease with complete heart block. The author saw no reason to link the hypertension directly to the asbestosis, but thought the enlargement of the right side of the heart probably came from the lung fibrosis. The author concluded that asbestosis is incurable.

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From J-M's medical library

This copy comes from the Johns-Manville medical library. J-M listed it in its medical library index as no. 003080. Barry Castleman cites it in chapter 1, "The Development of Knowledge About Asbestosis", of Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects (5th ed., 2005); see Reading Castleman.