THE ADRENALS IN DISEASE AND POISONING. 51 



Phisalix 106 refers to hypothermia as the most marked charac- 

 teristic of viper intoxication. He found it to occur rapidly 

 and to an intense degree, reaching in guinea-pigs as low as 

 22 C., though death usually occurred at 32 C. He also 

 observed that hypothermia prevailed after injections of ich- 

 thyotoxin, or eel-venom, while Bottard 107 noted it in guinea- 

 pigs after injections of sea-dragon venom. Hutinel also ob- 

 served it in a case of cobra-bite, the temperature of the patient, 

 a man, reaching down to 31.2 C. 



Acetanilid affords a striking illustration of the proposition 

 that when the central vascular trunks are dilated the periph- 

 eral capillaries are contracted. Wood refers to the experiments 

 of Hare, subsequently confirmed by Evans, in which a distinct 

 fall of temperature was observed to have followed the use of 

 acetanilid in normal animals allowed to run free. In a criti- 

 cism of these observations he writes: "In examining the records 

 of the calorimetric experiments made by Hare and Evans on 

 the normal animal, we find that not only did the rectal tempera- 

 ture not fall under the influence of antifebrin, but in nearly 

 every instance there was a distinct rise, amounting in some 

 cases to over a degree. It is evident, therefore, that these 

 experiments cannot be used to explain how antifebrin reduces 

 temperature when it does cause a fall." In truth, they can be 

 used for this purpose, but only with dilation of the large 

 vascular trunks of the abdomen, and secondary contraction of 

 the peripheral capillaries as factors of the process. The in- 

 ternal congestion caused the rise of temperature observed by 

 Wood; the peripheral depletion caused the lowered tempera- 

 ture observed by Hare and Evans. And so it appears to be 

 with all drugs we term "antipyretics" whose main effects are 

 exercised by withdrawing blood from the surface through in- 

 sufficiency of the adrenals induced by them, and transferring 

 it to the abdominal vascular trunks. In other words, they 

 merely remove the excess of temperature from the surface and 

 transfer it to the internal organs. 



The temperature in severe aconite poisoning is stated to 

 undergo "a very pronounced fall," though at the very start it 



106 Phisalix: Archives de Physiologie, 1894. 



107 Bottard : These de Paris, 1889. 



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