20 THE ACTION OF THE LIVING CELL 



toxic substances must mean that by all of these means 

 one may cause a marked stasis of blood in the splanch- 

 nic area. It was the investigation of this point which 

 occupied the author's attention some thirty years ago 

 and led to the various experimental investigations to 

 be considered in this book. 



Before further discussing the phenomena of shock 

 and considering the underlying mechanism in detail, 

 let us briefly recount the results of a few experiments 

 conducted by the author. (Turck, 1918a.) 



Cats were etherized, and after the application of 

 an elastic ligature to a leg in such a fashion as to shut 

 off the circulation, the thigh muscles below the liga- 

 ture were bruised and the tissues mangled. After 

 the lapse of an hour and a half, the constriction was 

 released and the limb occasionally massaged towards 

 the body in order to reestablish the circulation. 



Shortly afterwards the animals began to show 

 symptoms of shock, culminating in death, although 

 other animals which had been treated in precisely the 

 same fashion except that the ligature was not released, 

 did not exhibit signs of shock during the same inter- 

 val of time. Bits of muscle were removed from the 

 mangled limbs of the latter animals and the juice 

 expressed was injected intravenously into the same 

 animal, whereupon shock promptly ensued, although 

 the ligatures on the limbs had not been loosened. 



A similar result was obtained by transplanting the 

 bruised muscle tissue from below the ligature to the 

 uninjured muscles above it. An even more striking 

 result was obtained by transplantation of the injured 

 tissue into the thigh of an uninjured homologous ani- 

 mal, the latter invariably suffering shock and death 



