Crossword-Solution: PTOMAIN 7 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

While intestinal indigestion and absorption of toxins often tend to raise the blood pressure, some toxins thus absorbed, especially of the ptomain variety, lower blood pressure and cause shock, perhaps by weakening the muscle of the heart or by acting on the vasodilator vessels; or they may cause dilation of the vessels of the abdomen and in this manner lower blood pressure.

Here--in the dilated and obstructed sewer--the ptomain and leucomain class of poisons, and many of the poisonous germs, led by the king of morbid disturbers, the bacillus coli communis, find another and last chance to be taken up by the absorbing cells of the mucous membrane and returned to the blood; with which they are carried to all parts of the body, clogging the glands, choking up the pores and obstructing the circulation, thereby causing congestion and inflammation of the various organs.

Are a sour stomach and foul intestinal canal fit receptacles for food and liquids? When our receptacles are in this condition, why do we add more material for the generation of poisons of the ptomain and leucomain classes, and morbid gaseous elements? It has been demonstrated that during fermentation an apple will evolve a volume of gas six hundred times its own size.

That convenient refuge from etiological uncertainty, "ptomain poisoning," is a diagnosis that unquestionably has been made to cover a great variety of diverse conditions, from appendicitis and the pain caused by gallstones to the simple abdominal distention resulting from reckless gorging.

THE EXTENT OF FOOD POISONING Since cases of food poisoning, "ptomain poisoning," and the like are not required by law to be reported, public health authorities in general possess no information respecting their occurrence.