Is Uterine Activity Subject to Cerebral Control? 159 



Conclusions. 



The torsion of the head after unilateral removal of the laby- 

 rinth is due to the preponderating activity of the muscles of the 

 intact side. The afferent impulses concerned come largely from 

 the labyrinth, the muscles, the tendons of the neck, and the artic- 

 ulations of the cervical vertebrae. 



88 (1152) 



Is uterine activity subject to cerebral control? 



By H. G. Barbour and N. H. Copenhaver. (By invitation.) 



[From the Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Yale 



University.] 



Although morphin is known to delay the progress of labor we 

 have hitherto been unable to detect any inhibitory influence of 

 this drug upon the tone or activity of the uterus in animals. It 

 causes rather an increase in tone in the isolated uterus of cat and 

 guinea pig, 1 and often in the intact uterus of the decerebrate cat 

 or anesthetized rabbit. 2 The only inhibition of the uterus by 

 morphin which we have observed previous to the present work has 

 been accounted for by circulatory collapse. 



Conditions of anesthesia or decerebration under which the 

 morphin was given in our previous work have, by exclusion, led 

 us to the belief that morphin, in clinical doses, inhibits uterine 

 activity by a purely cerebral action. Desiring more direct evi- 

 dence on this point we were led to inquire into the nature of cere- 

 bral control of the uterus, if any exists. 



To this end we have begun by the employment of a method 

 subjecting a part of the cortex and basal ganglia to the influence 

 of cold and heat. This is done by means of a double metal tube 

 fixed in the skull of a rabbit, on one side, anterior to the coronal 

 suture and passing through the anterior portion of the corpus 

 striatum to the base of the skull. The lateral ventricle is usually 

 entered. This procedure, which was first employed by one of us 



1 Barbour, H. G., and Copenhaver, N. H., Journ. Pharm. and Exp. Ther., 1915, 

 VII, 529. 



2 Barbour, H. G., Journ. Pharm. and Exp. Ther., 1915, VII, 547. 



