THE PITUITARY BODY 



Therefore, the injection of epinephrine produces a hyper- 

 glycemia, a fall in the hepatic glycogen (which is restored 

 later), a fall in the glycogen but an increase in the hexose- 

 phosphate of striated muscle, a fall in the concentration 

 of inorganic P in the blood, and a change in the reverse direc- 

 tion of lactic acid. It is proposed to examine, in the light of 

 new work, how these effects are modified by hypophysec- 

 tomy. 



Years ago Aschner learned that the subcutaneous injec- 

 tion of epinephrine produces glycosuria in hypophysectomized 



TABLE 7 



Change as Mg. Per Cent in 



Sugar of blood after subcutaneous injection 



Sugar of blood after intravenous injection 



Hexosephosphate* of muscle after subcutaneous in- 

 jection 



Hexosephosphate* of muscle after intravenous in- 

 jection 



Glycogen of muscle after subcutaneous injection 



Glycogen of muscle after intravenous injection 



* The figures refer to the concentration of hexose. 



dogs much less readily than in normal animals. This obser- 

 vation applies with equal force to the behavior of the sugar 

 in the blood and has been extended to other mammals. De- 

 ficient absorption as an important factor in explaining the 

 small response was not considered experimentally until Rus- 

 sell and Cori (1937) undertook their work in rats. These 

 authors observed changes after the injection of epinephrine 

 into anesthetized rats as shown in Table 7. This brief sum- 

 mary of the results indicates that the delayed absorption of 

 epinephrine from the subcutaneous tissues is of great impor- 

 tance in accounting for the apparent insensitivity of hy- 



[212] 



