Volume 2

The Internal secretions and the principles of medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous.

  • Sajous, Charles E. de M. (Charles Eucharist de Medicis), 1852-1929.
Date:
1903-1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The Internal secretions and the principles of medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    43/1138 (page 807)
    were closed, the respiratory exchanges were often increased— evidence that an accumulation of the oxyphile secretion had occurred in the lungs. Now, matters were reversed when they also closed the only channel through which the secretion passes i upward, i.e., the inferior vena cava. It is only when, along with all other arteries (excepting the coronary arteries), write these inv^estigators, the vena cava [above the adrenals as shown by the report of their experiments] was also omitted from the circulation, that the exchanges dropped to the mini- mum. The well-known action of adrenal extractives on the heart aiiords tangible proof of the passage of this secretion through the cardiac cavities. The investigations of recent years tend to sustain the view that the heart's power to contract rhythmically is distinctly a property of the cardiac muscle. Small pieces of the ganglion- free apex of the frog's heart, strips of the ventricle of the tor- toise, etc., will beat rhythmically a long time when placed in suitable media, blood serum or artifically prepared fluids, saline solution, etc., especially if these contain calcium and potassium salts, and if they are kept supplied with oxygen under pres- sure. Yet it must also be borne in mind, writes Stewart,^^ that when we have localized the essential mechanism of the rhythmical contraction in the muscle of the heart, wtf have still to ask whether this mechanism is not put into action by some stimulus external to the muscle. My investigations have led me to ascribe this function to the secretion of the adrenals. Over fifty years ago, Brown-Sequard^^ emphasized the im- portance of the venous blood in cardiac dynamism. While ad- mitting that arterial blood tended to promote the contractile power of the cardiac muscle, he contended that the contractions were due to a stimulating action of the venous blood. The erroneous belief that COj was the energizing agent soon caused this view to be antagonized successfully. When the CO2 is left out of the question, however, it becomes evident that the blood of the inferior vena cava does contain a principle capable of ==1 Stewart: Manual of Physiology, fourth edition, p. 131, 1900. 22 Brown-Sequard: Experimental Researches applied to Physiology and Pathology, p. 104, 1853.