1876.] Cause of the slow Pulse in Jaundice, 443 



the blood-corpuscles. If these bile-acids, therefore, be injected into the 

 jugular Tein, they destroy or injure the red corpuscles with which they 

 meet, and the blood containing dissolved red corpuscles and bile-acids is 

 quickly brought to the left side of the heart and thence into the coronary 

 arteries. This blood is unfit for the exchange of oxygen with the 

 muscular substance of the heart, as the red blood-corpuscles are so 

 much injured ; and it is to the consequent change in the muscular 

 walls of the heart that Traube apparently attributes the slow pulse of 

 jaundice. 



About the same time Johannes Kanke, in the coarse of his researches 

 into the phenomena of tetanus, arrived at the conclusion that the bile- 

 acids have a paralyzing action upon the striped muscular tissue, and that 

 it is solely by the action of these acids upon the muscular fibres of the 

 heart that the slow pulse is caused*. He agrees with Traube in opposi- 

 tion to Eohrig and Landois t. 



I have repeated most of the experiments of those who have gone before 

 me ; but those only will be detailed which seem to throw a new light upon 

 the matter in hand. 



The bile-acids employed in these researches were prepared from ox- 

 gall by a slight modification of the process recommended by Kiihnet. 

 I have to thank my friend Dr. Shuter, of Caius College, Cambridge, 

 Assistant Demonstrator of Physiology in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 

 for his kindness in preparing for my use some of the bile-acids used in 

 these experiments. In nearly all instances the bile-acids were dissolved 

 in distilled water, 10 per cent, in strength. I should mention that the 

 acids were not separated from their combination with soda. 



My first experiments were directed altogether to the heart of the frog, 

 which lends itself readily to researches of this kind, as it can be separated 

 from its attachments, and its contractions kept up by being fed with 

 serum by means of an artificial circulation. In this way I attempted to 

 decide if the slow pulse be due to an excitement of the ends of the vagus 

 in the heart. 



The heart of a frog being arranged in Bowditch's apparatus§, the fol- 

 lowing observations were taken :— 



* Arch. f. Anatomie u. Physiologie, 1864, p. 340 ; also in ' Tetanus ' (Leipzig, 1865) 

 p. 395. 



t Landois, < Deutsche Klinik,' 1863, no. 46, p. 449. 

 \ Lehrbuch d. phys. Chemie (Leipzig, 1866), p. 75. 



§ For a description of this apparatus see Dr. Lauder Bmnton's Experimental 

 :ion of the Action of Medicines/ London, 1875, p. 72, 



2k2 



