SURGICAL SHOCK 41 



I have devised an adrenalinoscope, which is a further 

 advance on a method already used by Douglas Cow 

 and also by O. B. Meyer. 



THE AUTHOR'S ADRENALINOSCOPE. 



A rabbit is killed by a blow on the head, and the 

 thoracic aorta rapidly dissected out. With fine 

 sharp scissors a spiral strip of aorta is cut about a 

 quarter of an inch wide from the whole length of 

 the aorta. We thus obtain a strip about three 

 inches long, in which the circular muscle of the aorta 

 is running longitudinally, so that a vasoconstrictor 

 drug will induce shortening. One end of the spiral 

 is transiixed on a hook secured in a cork at the 

 bottom of a vertical glass cylinder, and the upper 

 end is connected by a thread with a long lever 

 recording its movements on a smoked drum. The 

 spiral is, of course, stretched straight by the weight 

 of the lever. The glass cylinder contains warm 

 normal saline, which can be drawn off through a 

 tube with stopcock in the cork at the bottom, and 

 replaced by running in the test fluid gently down 

 the side of the cylinder containing the strip of aorta. 

 If any appreciable quantity of adrenalin is present, 

 the distant point of the writing lever will rise within 

 a minute or two, and then fall again a few minutes 

 later. It is difficult to avoid a very steady fall of 

 the point of the lever from stretching of the aorta, 

 but this does not interfere with the reaction. 



This adrenalinoscope is extraordinarily delicate, 

 and will show an appreciable contraction with as 

 little as I in 500 million of Parke, Davis & Co.'s 



