The control of the suprarenal glands by the splanchnic nerves 1

THERE is no clear knowledge2 at present with regard to the share taken by the suprarenal glands in resisting various processes that are harmful to the body. For the last two years I have tried to gain some light on this question by analysing the state of exhaustion to which the human suprarenals are reduced in the different conditions leading to death in Hospital cases. Attention was paid chiefly to the loss of the normal load of cortical " lipoid " substance and of the adrenalin in the medulla, the gross total of the latter being measured quantitatively by physiological assay. Unfortunately the conditions of fatal disease in man were found to be too complex to permit of simple atialysis. Broadly summarising the results, it appeared that the glands suffered rapid eyhaustion in cases of any microbic fever, of repeated simple hawmorrhage, and of surgical shock: but to distinguish clearly the value and nature of each of these factors was impossible. I therefore tried to reproduce each separately on experimental animals, in which the relationship of the nervous system to the glands could at the same time be studied. Method. Cats were used in all the experiments. The lipoid in the cortex of the cat3 is never so abundant as in the human gland: changes in its distribution were observed histologically, but they did not seem to follow any special cause, and they will be referred to only incidentally in this paper. It was tlherefore to the adrenalin content of the medulla that attention was in the main directed.