Thermoregulation in spinal man

It has never been unequivocally established whether or not the spinal cord, chronically isolated from the brain above the thoracic sympathetic outflow, plays any part in temperature regulation. Animals, kept in rooms at an air temperature of 800 F (26.50 C), after chronic traumatic lesions of the spinal cord, behave essentially as poikilotherms (Pfluiger, 1878; Pembrey, 1897; Freund & Strassmann, 1912; Sherrington, 1924), but if they are kept at 60-700 F (15.6-21.1l C) they appear to regain some measure of temperature regulation against cold (Thauer, 1939; Clark, 1940). Studies on man are equivocal. Some authors claim that patients with acute traumatic lesions in the lower cervical segments are, initially, hyperthermic but later regain an ability to sweat (Foerster, 1936). Others state that they are hypothermic (Holmes, 1915). The experimental studies reported in this paper were made on human male patients, who, with one exception, had complete lesions due to injuries at various levels in the spinal cord, in order to study further the nature of the thermo-regulatory processes in spinal man. The subjects comprised one normal man, four patients with lesions at segmental levels between C6 and T1, one with a lesion below T 4 and one with a lesion below T 8. In all patients many months had elapsed since their injuries to the spinal cord. These subjects were exposed at rest and naked for 1-2 hr at air temperatures of 18-20, 28 and 35370 C. These temperatures and the design of the experiments were chosen to effect a comparison with the data of Hardy & du Bois (1938, 1941) and so to bring out any alteration in the thermoregulatory processes due to the cord lesions.