56 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE ADRENALS. 



dence of increased vascular pressure, including cerebral hyper- 

 aBmia, a pathological condition often observed at autopsies, 

 more or less suddenly lapses into a period of quietude which 

 recalls the critical stage of many diseases. Drowsiness, con- 

 fusion of thought, and coma then appear in quick succession. 

 That we are dealing with suprarenal insufficiency is shown by 

 the concomitant loss of muscular power beginning in the lower 

 extremities and which may reach the stage of paralysis. Is 

 this condition due to cerebral exsanguination? Paralysis of 

 one of the extremities of a frog poisoned with atropine may 

 be interfered with, according to Wood, by tying the member. 

 This demonstrates that peripheral vascular depletion under- 

 lies the production of paralysis as well as the reduction of 

 cerebral activity, since tying the frog's leg can have but one 

 result: i.e., prevent the return to the dilated abdominal trunks 

 of at least a part of the blood in the limb. 



Acute alcoholism probably typifies better than any con- 

 dition brought on by poisons the fall from a primary intense 

 erethism of the cerebral circulation to the opposite state 

 through suprarenal insufficiency. The cheerfulness and the 

 gestures of the inebriate often reach a stage of inco-ordinate 

 excitement, mental and physical. Epileptic seizures are 

 brought on not only in epileptics, but also, at times, in indi- 

 viduals that are not subject to the disease. If deterioration 

 of the cerebral cellular elements have occurred through pre- 

 vious excesses and delirium tremens appear, the delirium is 

 attended with terrors and frightful vision; if mania a potu 

 prevail, the patient perhaps gentle and kindly disposed nor- 

 mally becomes furious, wild, shouts and strikes, often with 

 homicidal intent, him or her whom he probably .most cherishes. 



Here, again, the suprarenal glands are shown to be pri- 

 mary factors of the process by the excessive muscular activity. 

 But is the action of the secretion exerted directly upon the 

 muscular tissues or upon the nervous structures themselves, 

 including the centers? The action of alcohol "would seem to 

 be due," according to Wood, "to a direct action upon the 

 heart itself or upon the walls of the arterioles." By inserting 

 "suprarenal secretion" instead of the word "alcohol" the proc- 

 ess becomes clear, since it is the former which would cause 



