Chapter V 

 FURTHER EXPERIMENTS WITH CYTOST 



The investigations presented in the preceding 

 chapters have shown that cytost, a product of tissue 

 autolysis, when introduced into the circulation 

 promptly induces a splanchnic stasis which is fol- 

 lowed by shock and death. Now such effects are in- 

 duced only by relatively large quantities of cytost. 

 This is evident from the fact that shock does not fol- 

 low minor trauma and burns, although from the 

 preceding discussion it should be apparent that such 

 injuries must provoke the liberation of cytost in pre- 

 cisely the same manner as does more extensive tissue 

 damage. Such being the case, it is of interest to fol- 

 low the reaction of animals to injections of sublethal 

 quantities of cytost prepared by the in vitro autolysis 

 of homologous tissue. 



The cytost extracts used in the following experi- 

 ments were prepared from cat's muscle, which was 

 allowed to autolyze in chloroform vapor for 24 hours. 

 The autolyzed tissue was triturated with an equal 

 weight of sterile water, heated to boiling, and centri- 

 fuged to remove the insoluble matter. The super- 

 natant fluid was then sterilized by passing it through 

 a Berkefeld filter and used directly for injection. 



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