1 70 INTERNAL SECRETION 



abdominal cavity; they also placed them free in the abdominal 

 cavity ; and they implanted them in vascular organs, such as the 

 kidney and liver. But in every instance the implanted organs 

 perished. Small portions of implanted suprarenal tissue did not, 

 in the vast majority of cases, heal in. 



Better results were obtained by Schmieden, who implanted 

 small portions of suprarenal tissue in the kidneys of rabbits and, 

 in a large number of cases, these healed in. But he does not 

 believe that these implanted portions are likely to remain alive 

 for any length of time, and his experiments seem to show that 

 one year is the maximal period. 



Payr used the spleen with considerable success as the site 

 of implantation for the thyroid, but in the case of the suprarenals 

 the choice of this locality was followed only by transient healing 

 in, no permanent results being obtained (Coenen, Kreidl, Biedl). 

 Shiota found that a suprarenal, when transplanted into the spleen 

 or kidney of rabbits and cats, contained adrenalin during the 

 first forty-eight hours only, the substance disappearing at the end 

 of this time. Although the cortex will remain in a fairly healthy 

 condition for from ten to seventeen weeks, the medullary substance 

 ceases to stain with chromium twenty-four hours after implanta- 

 tion. 



The admirable experiments of v. Haberer and Stoerk resulted 

 in successful suprarenal transplantation with complete functional 

 activity. Their method was to remove the suprarenal without 

 severing its vascular peduncle and to implant it in the kidney. 

 De Dominicis had already dislodged the left suprarenal without 

 cutting through the peduncle (his experiment has been described 

 in a previous chapter) and I had removed the suprarenals to an 

 extra-peritoneal position, leaving their vascular stalk intact. These 

 results undoubtedly showed that, if the normal nutritional con- 

 ditions were maintained, the transplanted organ would preserve its 

 functional activity. In 50 per cent, of their cases, v. Haberer and 

 Stoerk succeeded in producing permanent results which were 

 functionally, as well as anatomically, demonstrable. In the un- 

 successful cases, the result was invariably attributable to insuffi- 

 cient nourishment of the implanted organ. 



Microscopic examination of these successfully transplanted 

 suprarenals showed that in no case did the organ retain its original 

 structure, but that, in addition to sound and hypertrophied tissue, 

 it invariably contained regressive and necrosed substance. In the 

 first few days after transplantation with preservation of the 

 peduncle, there is a regressive metamorphosis of the organ which 

 is occasionally so widespread that the only part which remains 

 alive is that in the immediate vicinity of the peduncle. Com- 

 paratively soon after operation, generally in the first week, active 

 proliferation commences at this spot, the proliferating parenchyma 

 spreading into the regressive or necrosed portions of the organ. 



