28 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE ADRENALS. 



that promptly end in death. That products of metabolism may 

 with justice be considered as toxic is shown by a detail in 

 Langlois's work, the importance of which does not seem to 

 have attracted sufficient attention: While decapsulated frogs 

 died in 48 hours during summer months, they lived 12 days 

 in the winter: i.e., during hibernation, when metabolic proc- 

 esses are at their lowest ebb. It required a certain ratio of 

 toxic elements to the body-weight to bring on the culminating 

 phenomena; the "fatal dose" was made up in 48 hours, in 

 summer, i.e., when the full activity and proportionate catab- 

 oiism prevailed; the same relative dose could only be made 

 up in six times 48 hours when hibernal lethargy reduced tissue- 

 waste in proportion. Thus, Biedl's experiments are not nega- 

 tive in this direction, as he deemed them to be. They appear 

 to us to suggest that, as will be shown in these pages, all toxics 

 do not influence the adrenals with equally marked activity. 



Biedl also found that, when the splanchnic nerve was cut 

 and the suprarenal branches were stimulated, hypergcmia ap- 

 peared in the organs. Howell refers to the striking evidence 

 afforded by the effects of electrical stimulation. If, after cut- 

 ting the splanchnic nerve and introducing a cannula into the 

 suprarenal vein, the blood is collected and the peripheral end 

 of the cut nerve is stimulated, the quantity of blood obtained 

 in a definite time is not increased, but it is found to contain 

 more of the blood-pressure-raising substance: a fact which indi- 

 cates that its secretory activity is increased. He therefore con- 

 cludes that the adrenals act as true glands, and that they are 

 provided with a reflex mechanism corresponding to that of the 

 latter. Biedl also expressed his conviction that secretory 

 fibers as well as vasodilator fibers are present in the splanchnic 

 nerves. Dogiel 68 likewise found that the medullary nerves 

 form complicated plexiform arrangements which terminate 

 upon the surface of the glandular elements; and, furthermore, 

 that the nerve-cells in no way differ from those of any sym- 

 pathetic ganglion. 



All these facts seem to us to warrant the conclusions 

 that: 



88 Dogiel: Archiv f. Anatomie und Physiologic, p. 90, 1894. 



