The number of diseases marked by a severe grade of cyanosis is not large, and most of them come under two or three headings. If congenital heart disease be absent, then it is usually a case of emphysema, or the patient has been indulging indiscriminately in one of the coal tar products which, in the form of headache powders, can be purchased at any of the numerous soda water drug stores. Of late years, Osler and others have called attention to still another form of cyanosis, that which is accompanied by splenomegaly and polycythemia. In 1902, Stokvis of Amsterdam called attention to what he called autotoxic enterogenous cyanosis, and van den Bergh has recently reported two new cases of this rare condition.1
The symptom complex as described originally by Stokvis had as its three main features, enteritis, marked cyanosis, and a clubbed condition of the ends of the fingers.