STUDIES IN THE METABOLIC CHANGES INDUCED 
BY ADMINISTRATION OF GUANIDINE BASES. 
I. INFLUENCE OF INJECTED GUANIDINE HYDROCHLORIDE 
' UPON BLOOD SUGAR CONTENT. 
By C. K. WATANABE. 
(From the Laboratory of Pathological Chemistry, School of Medicine, and the 
Sheffield Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry, Yale 
University, New Haven.) 
(Received for publication, December 13, 1917.) 
It is indicated in the work of many former investigators that 
there exists an intimate relation between idiopathic tetany and 
disturbed parathyroid function. The fact that the symptoms of 
tetany and tetania parathyreopriva are almost identical has had 
experimental confirmation. 
Paton and Findlay (1) confirmed the results of former workers in a 
series of critical investigations, in which they found that true tetany de- 
veloped only after complete parathyroidectomy and that when one ex- 
ternal parathyroid was left with its blood supply intact, no symptoms, or 
at most transient tremors, appear. 
Many hypotheses concerning the cause of tetany have been proposed, 
especially from the standpoint of parathyreopriva. One states that the 
lack of the parathyroid produces a toxic substance in the body, or the 
normal function of this gland is to neutralize the toxins formed during 
normal metabolism. The other concerns the deficiency of some essential 
substance in the blood and tissues, especially calcium, which exerts an 
inhibition on the hyperexcitability of the nerves. It is well known that 
injection of calcium salts removes the symptoms for a time, but that 
bleeding and transfusion of saline solution (2, 3) and.that bleeding followed 
by injection of an indifferent solution free from calcium (Ringer’s solu- 
tion) (4) have the same effect. These facts seem to point out that the Ca 
deficiency is not the true cause. Beebe’s experiments in which he reduced 
‘the symptoms by injection of the extracts of parathyroids (5) and of the 
nucleoprotein of parathyroids (6), lead us to believe that the symptoms 
are due to some poison produced as a consequence of normal metabolism 
incident to the removal of the parathyroid. Recently Paton and Findlay 
(7) suggested that in tetany some toxic substances, especially guanidine 
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