248 IRRITABILITY 



Recently Warburg'^ has likewise found an oxydative depression 

 during narcosis in the eggs of the sea urchin and in the red cor- 

 puscles of geese, and the same fact has lately been also demon- 

 strated by Joannovics und Pick^ for the oxydative activity of the 

 liver cells of the dog. 



This fundamental establishment of the fact that narcosis pre- 

 vents oxydations in living substance is at once followed by the 

 further problem, in what manner do the disintegration processes 

 undergo alterations during narcosis ? That they must be altered, 

 and this in the form of a reduced energy production, is clearly 

 shown by the decrease of irritability and the increase of the 

 decrement of the conduction of excitation. Both become the 

 greater the deeper the narcosis. The observations just discussed 

 render these facts at once self-evident. They follow as a simple 

 and necessary result of the elimination of the oxydative pro- 

 cesses. If these are suppressed further breaking down, if not 

 influenced by addition of other factors, proceeds anoxydatively. 

 The previously observed series of processes is developed, which 

 invariably take place when oxygen deficiency occurs and which 

 produce in the clearest form the results of asphyxiation on the 

 withdrawal of oxygen supply. If, therefore, the disintegration 

 processes are not influenced in some other manner during nar- 

 cosis, they must then take place in the same way as in the with- 

 drawal of the oxygen supply. The question, if this is actually the 

 case, can be experimentally decided by comparing, on the one 

 hand, the development of the course of asphyxiation -during nar- 

 cosis, and on the other, the withdrawal of the oxygen supply. 

 We have carried out this comparison for the spinal cord centers 

 as well as for the medullated nerve. A prolonged series of exper- 

 iments have been made by Bondy^ with the apparatus constructed 



1 Otto Warburg: "Ueber die Oxydationen in lebenden Zellen." Zeitschr. f. 

 physiol. Chemie Bd. 66, 1910. The same: "Ueber Beeinflussung der Oxydationen in 

 lebenden Zellen nach Versuchen an roten Blutkorperchen." Zeitschr. f. physiol. 

 Chemie Bd. 69, 1910. 



2 Joannovics und Pick: "Intravitale Oxydationshemmung in der Leber durch Nar- 

 kotica." Pfliigers Arch. Bd. 140, 1911. 



3 Bondy : "Untersuchungen iiber die Sauerstoffspeicherung in den Nervencentren.'' 

 Zeitschr. f. allgera. Physiol. Bd. Ill, 1904. 



