268 THE ADRENAL SYSTEM AND VASOMOTOR FUNCTIONS. 



the pilocarpine must certainly have stimulated the functional 

 activity of the organs through the blood. That the adrenals, 

 or at least the normal adrenal, were involved in the process is 

 suggested by the actual phenomena witnessed in the animals 

 and the gradual increase of power assumed by the adrenal 

 on the normal side, as time elapsed. In the first cat, for in- 

 stance, the injection was given three weeks after the operation, 

 and the eye on the operated side remained dry. In the second, 

 a younger one, one-half the dose given the first cat was ad- 

 ministered one month after the operation; this violently 

 stimulated the normal adrenal and so increased vascular press- 

 ure that lacrymation occurred on both sides especially on the 

 operated side, since the vessels had lost their tonicity. The 

 muscular coats of these vessels in the first cat had not been 

 contracted, the dose given it having caused insufficiency of 

 the adrenals; but the smaller dose administered to the second 

 animal having given rise to stimulation of these organs, lacry- 

 mation occurred. In the third cat, the injection was given 

 four and one-half months after the operation. By that time 

 the normal adrenal had been so stimulated by the additional 

 labor imposed upon it that aided perhaps by a collateral 

 nerve-supply it assumed the functions of both. Hence "there 

 was an equal amount of lacrymal secretion in both eyes." 



Assuming, then, that pilocarpine increased functional 

 activity by enhancing local blood-pressure, which means more 

 oxidizing plasma, and that the current typified the nerve- 

 impulse, thus reproducing the active process that prevails in 

 muscular functions, why should removal of the stellate gan- 

 glion markedly influence these effects? This involves the con- 

 sideration of an important feature of the problem: i.e., the 

 origin of the impulse-waves to which we ascribe all the func- 

 tions credited to the motor nerves, the sympathetic nerves, 

 and the vasomotor nerves. To simplify matters, however, we 

 will not trace the various nervous organs involved to their 

 primary source, but only to their common meeting-place: i.e., 

 the medulla. 



That this will suffice for the time being is well shown by 

 experimental transverse sections of the structure, on the one 

 hand, and simultaneous electrical stimulation of a peripheral 



