Electrolyte changes and chemotherapy in experimental burn and traumatic shock and hemorrhage.

During the past few years, observations have been made on experimentally produced burn and traumatic shock and death from hemorrhage in over 10,000 small laboratory animals. This report of our results is being made because of their possible significance in clinical practice. Knowledge of the circulatory disturbances in shock has recently been greatly enlarged, but the nature of the underlying mechanisms has remained obscure. For this reason the therapy of shock has been directed primarily toward correction of these demonstrable alterations in the circulation, perhaps to the neglect of important changes in the tissues. In the field of therapy, a review of the literature reveals a diversity of results from laboratory investigation. 1 This is an expression of the difficulties encountered in the standardization of methods and, to some extent, of the fact that with large laboratory animals it is difficult to employ adequate numbers to compensate for wide biologic