The Destruction of Adrenalin by Spinal Fluid. 27 

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The destruction of adrenalin by spinal fluid. 



By S. J. MELTZER. 



[From the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology of the 

 Rockefeller Institute.] 



Soon after the discovery of the profound effect of adrenal 

 extract upon blood -pressure the question arose as to the fate of 

 this extract in the blood. The rise of the blood-pressure after 

 an intravenous injection of adrenin passes off in a few minutes 

 and none of the adrenin is found to persist in the blood, no matter 

 how large the injected dose has been. The quite natural explana- 

 tion of this phenomenon was, that the blood destroys adrenin. 

 But Oliver and Schafer found that in a mixture of adrenin and 

 blood, even after standing for 22 hours, the adrenin remained un- 

 affected. It has been confirmed since by several investigators, 

 that neither blood nor serum is capable of destroying adrenal ex- 

 tract. I shall not discuss for the present the problem of the fate 

 of adrenin in the body in general. I wish only to report the dis- 

 covery of the fact that there is at least one body fluid which is 

 capable of destroying adrenin and that is spinal fluid. The obser- 

 vation was made by mixing human spinal fluid with adrenalin. 

 The spinal fluids were obtained in the first place from a number of 

 cases of poliomyelitis of the Rockefeller Hospital and from two 

 cases of tuberculous meningitis, obtained for me by Dr. Flexner. 

 But this destructive action is not specific to these diseases. I 

 found it to be possessed by spinal fluids from cases of resolving 

 pneumonia, gastro-enteritis and eczema, obtained through the 

 kindness of Dr. Wollstein. Evidently it is a physiologic property 

 of normal spinal fluids, although there seems to be a difference in 

 degree of action between some pathologic cases; for instance the 

 spinal fluid from poliomyelitis seems to destroy adrenalin definitely 

 more readily than that from tuberculous meningitis. This fact 

 might attain a practical significance. The presence of adrenalin 

 was studied by its dilating action upon the frog's pupil (the so-called 

 Meltzer-Ehrmann reaction) and its action upon blood-pressure. 



