CHATONNET, J. 
SPECIFIC CALORIFIC INNERVATION 
A specific control of heat production has sometimes been as- 
sumed. For the muscles, no recent experience can support the views 
of Freund (1914) and of Wenger (1933) that a nervous apparatus 
controls the metabolism without any other activity. Certainly, the 
muscle can present various kinds of activity according to the con- 
ditions of stimulation (tonus, shivering). During acclimation, motor 
and electric activity could decrease (Sellers, 1954), or become dif- 
ferent (Carlson, 1955) despite an increase in metabolism and the 
development of vascularization pointed out in these conditions by 
Heroux, and Saint-Pierre (1957). However, these reactions can be 
the result of hormonal control, and no special innervation is neces- 
sary for them. 
It may be questioned, also, whether there is any special in- 
nervation of abdominal viscera, chiefly of the liver, subjecting their 
heat producing activities to the thermoregulatory control. Some 
investigators stress the importance of these organs in the chemical 
regulation against cold (Fedorov and Shur, 1942; Jitariuet al., 1941, 
Donhoffer et al., 1959). But evaluating the role played by these or- 
gans is very difficult. A nervous control of their activity has also 
been considered; Freund (1913) first, and then von Issekutz (1937) 
explained the importance of the low cervical cord for chemical tem- 
perature regulation because nervous impulses leave the cord here, 
and cross over the stellate ganglia or possibly the vagi, and thus 
they are able to reach the liver. 
On three dogs, whose active muscular fields were reduced be- 
forehand by section of the spinal cord at fourth thoracic level and 
section of the brachial plexus bilaterally, and which exhibited a 
"plateau" of metabolism in the cold, we performed a section of both 
pneumogastric nerves in the thorax. After this operation the maxi- 
mum metabolism remains unaltered (Fig. 5). On two other dogs pre- 
pared in the same way for a limitation of muscular activity, bilateral 
stellectomy failed to induce any change of the plateau level (Fig. 6). 
These results confirm the above-mentioned interpretation of a 
muscular destination of the cervical outflow controlling chemical 
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