A Method for Collecting the Blood from the Suprarenfal Gland in the Dog, without Fastening, Narcotizing, Laparotomy or Provoking any Pain

Abstract

I. A method for collecting the blood from the suprarenal gland of the dog that is standing, sitting or sleeping at will is described in the text. Namely the blood is collected through the lumbar route operation in the dog, the operation field of which is beforehand desensitized by the interference of the corresponding dorsal roots, and really without fastening, narcotizing, laparotomy, or evoking any pain.
II. The spontaneous liberation of epinephrine in dogs estimated by the use of this method and the rabbit intestine segment method, that is the discharge when no manipulation other than practising this method itself is conducted and the animal is not excited, is determined for one gland as 0.00001-0.00012 mgrm., on an average 0.00003 (for the left) 0.00004 (for the right) mgrm. per kilo and per minute and 0.00007 mgrm. for the both glands together, the blood flow being assayed mean 0.3 c. c. for one gland per kilo and per minute, and the epinephrine concentration as mean 0.0001 mgrm. per 1 c. c. suprarenal vein blood. The epinephrine output determined by this new method is therefore really of a quite different order compared with the figures of the same nature obtained by the cava. pocket method in the non-anaesthetized, de-afferented dogs as well as in the anaesthetized, normal dogs, presented in the previous papers from this laboratory. The striking smallness of the epinephrine liberation taken by this method is in virtue of the low concentration of epinephrine in the suprarenal vein blood obtained by it.
III. By some experiments with the non-anaesthetized, de-afferented, but fastend dogs, it was also definitely demonstrated that the preparing of the cava pocket induces a remarkable exaggeration of the epinephrine output, the results with the lumbar route operation in one and the same dog being brought forward for comparison.
By the use of anaesthesia this difference becomes much reduced, and finally it disappears completely when sufficiently deep anaesthesia is established.