THE ADRENAL SECRETION AND PULMONARY RESPIRATION. 121 



there occur phenomena which simultaneously point to the cessa- 

 tion of suprarenal functions and to defective oxidation of the 

 tissues. With dyspnoea appears muscular weakness: the mus- 

 cles of the thorax, the diaphragm, have lost their tone their 

 pabulum vitce, as it were. But this does not only indicate the 

 loss of tone which the suprarenal secretion imparts; there is 

 gradual loss of power, ending in paralysis. Why should this 

 occur if metabolism can still continue? Nothing has been 

 changed in the organism but organs which are only supposed 

 to give tone to the muscular elements. And still metabolism 

 is obviously arrested. That it is due to the absence of oxygen 

 and arrest of oxidation i.e., combustion within the tissues is 

 proven by the fact that the temperature is lowered everywhere. 

 In all of the rats in which Boinet took the rectal temperature 

 marked hypothermia was noted. The opposite conditions of 

 temperature between the central organs and the peripheral 

 tissues no longer obtain here; it constitutes a function of 

 which the suprarenal glands are the center and which gradually 

 ceases when these are removed. 



Gourfein 92 has experimentally shown that the destruction 

 of these organs greatly influenced nutrition. One-twentieth 

 of both capsules sufficed to keep animals alive from 18 days 

 to 9 weeks; but, notwithstanding the fact that they took their 

 normal food, there was steady loss of weight, death occurring 

 when the half of their normal weight had been lost. That this 

 cannot be ascribed to trophic lesions of purely nervous origin 

 is shown by the fact that motor nerves and even their intra- 

 muscular ramifications were found to have lost none of their 

 electrical excitability. 



Evidently metabolism ceases when the suprarenal glands 

 are removed, while the other features referred to point to 

 arrest of oxidation in the tissues as the cause of this cessation. 

 This, in addition to the fact stated, that the constituents of 

 haemoglobin lose their affinity for one another when these 

 organs are removed, and the invariable presence of suprarenal 

 symptoms when toxic elements are sufficiently active to cause 

 methasmoglobinuria, h&matoporphyrinuria, etc., or other evi- 



82 Gourfein: Revue inter, de Therap. et de Pharm., May 17, 1896. 



