STUDIES ON TISSUES OF FASTING ANIMALS. 



S. MORGULIS, PAUL E. HOWE AND P. B. HAWK. 



The changes rendered in the finer structure of tissues of fasting 

 animals have been extensively studied and the results of these 

 investigations have an important bearing upon our understanding 

 of the inanition phenomena in general. Apart from the interest 

 which the subject presents from a purely histological point of 

 view, it throws light on many obscure problems regarding the 

 transformation of materials within the organism occasioned by 

 the fast. 



The account here presented is based upon an examination of 

 tissues from several dogs and one fox which had died of pro- 

 tracted inanition, having previously suffered a very large loss 

 in body weight. These animals had been used in a number of 

 metabolism experiments^ conducted some years ago in the 

 University of Illinois.^ The tissues were removed immediately 

 after the animal's death and fixed in Teleschnitzky 's and Zenker's 

 fluids. The material was carried through graduated alcohols 

 and then preserved in eighty per cent, alcohol. It was embedded 

 in parafihn, sectioned and stained in Delafield's hsemotoxylin, with 

 eosin as a counterstain. 



A superficial examination of the sectioned material, except in 

 a few instances, reveals nothing abnormal. But a little attentive 

 study is sufficient to appreciate the different ways in which the 

 effect of prolonged inanition is stamped upon the histological 

 elements of the organism. 



Looking at the smooth muscles in the intestinal tract of 

 every one of the animals which died of fasting the cells appear 

 turbid and without a trace of longitudinal fibrillation. The 



1 Howe, Mattill and Hawk, Jour. Biol. Chem., lo, 417, 1911 and 11, 103, 1912. 

 Howe and Hawk, Jour. Am. Che?n. Soc, 33, 215, 1911; Am. Jour, of Physiology, 

 29, xiv., 1912, and 30, 174, 1912. 



2 We take this opportunity to acknowledge the material assistance which we 

 received from the department of chemistry of the University of Illinois in defraying 

 the expenses of the research. 



