The use of ganglion blocking agents in relation to neurogenic factors in hypertension / by W.D.M. Paton.

  • Paton, William D. M.
Date:
[1954]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The use of ganglion blocking agents in relation to neurogenic factors in hypertension / by W.D.M. Paton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE USE. OF GANGLION BLOCKING AGENTS IN RELATION TO NEUROGENIC FACTORS IN HYPERTENSION Published in a book entitled M A Ciba Foundation ymposium, on HYPERTENSION,,Humoral and Neurogenic Factors 1954* P 180-188. Pulishers J.&.A.Churchill Ltd., 104, Glousecter Place, W.l. ) by W.D.M.Paton, M.A.,D.M., University College Plospital Medical School, London W.C.l. One of the major dangers in the study of hypertension eems to be the ease of making misleading inductions, L.e.believing things to be causally associated which are lot so in fact. It recalls the story of the little boy Living by the seaside on the border between Ulster and Nre who used to play with a small girl on the other side of the boner. They were only children and it was a lonely neighbourhood. One hot day, daringly, they decided to )athe without bathing suits. As the little girl undressed n expression of amazement crossed the little boyTs face, gosh he said, I didnft know that Catholics and rotestants were so different. Confronted with such omplexities, I would like to avoid the wader aspects f hypertension and simply to examinein some detail a ueh narrower point, hovr to obtain from the use of anglion blocking drugs information about the neurogenic actors in hypertension. First there are some special features of ganglionic Hock which have to be mentioned. Ganglia differ in their ■~v W _ e nsitivity. In cats, for instance, the ganglia supplying tie nictitating membrane are more resistant than those ippliying the salivary gland. In man, after a dose of sxamethonium one subject will faint on standing without lere being anyeffect on the eyes, while another has Ns accommodation paralysed without any fall in blood pressure )\i standing. There is no established explanation for this. c’Nt if microscopical sections of ganglia are examined Biiey ooviously do not conform to the simple usual diagram; Ley consist instead of a very complex basket work of ndritessurrounding the ganglion cell with many small ipporting glial cells carried aming them. If, then, lere is something of a cellular barrier round some or toy ganglion cells, this would mean that these particular Ills might well prove relatively inaccessible to an Ejected quaternary salt (because, of the impermeability oh cells to such compounds). The practical consequence B course is simply that one cannot assume , if one has ocked one . anglion, that the other ganglia will be i: ocked to the same degree