The significance of the supra-renal capsules in the action of certain alkaloids / by H.H. Dale and P.P. Laidlaw.

  • Dale, Henry H. (Henry Hallett), 1875-1968.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The significance of the supra-renal capsules in the action of certain alkaloids / by H.H. Dale and P.P. Laidlaw. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (deganglionated) eye; the latter was as completely refractory as the normal isolated iris. Ten mgms. of hordenine-methiodide, after washing of the iris and transference to fresh Ringer’s solution, merely intensified the constriction of the pupil. But this left iris, transferred again to fresh Ringer’s solution, showed a very abnormally high sensitiveness to adrenine. 1/50 mgm. (i.e. one in five millions), which had no per¬ ceptible effect on the right (normal) isolated iris, caused a prompt and very rapid dilatation of the left pupil. Later, in fresh Ringer, a very distinct effect was obtained with 1/250 mgm. (i.e. 1 in 25 millions). We have, then, this suggestive series of facts. The cat’s eye rendered supersensitive to adrenine by degeneration of its sympathetic nerve-supply, shows a similar supersensitiveness to a peripheral sympathetic effect which follows injection of the nicotine alkaloids, and which, in an animal under urethane, is not abolished by removal of the supra-renals or exclusion of all abdominal viscera from circulation. But the iris, so supersensitive to this effect in the body, is as indifferent to the nicotine alkaloids as the normal iris when isolated. We have seen that the peripheral effect of these alkaloids in the cat under chloroform or ether is definitely traceable to increased output of adrenine from the supra-renal glands. The suggestion is almost irresistible, that the remarkably similar effect, which, under urethane, persists after decapsulation, is also due to the production, in response to the injection, and from some other source, of a substance having, at least in this direction, an adrenine-like effect. No other conception of this action which has yet presented itself to us accords so well with its time relations and with its total disappearance when the responsive tissue is treated as an isolated organ. We are not, however, in a position to present it as anything more than an attractive speculation. We hope by further experiment to attain direct evidence for or against it. At present we can only settle one point, namely, that the “ other source ” of such a hypothetical substance cannot be identified with the minor deposits of chromaffin tissue scattered over the sympathetic system, nor with sympathetic ganglia proper. If it were so, ligature of the aorta at the diaphragm, excluding from circulation all but a small portion of the sympathetic system, should assuredly reduce the effect to a minimal trace. We have seen, on the contrary, that this procedure makes little, if any difference in its intensity.