American Practitioner and News Volume 35, No. 5 - V. 36, No. 10 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ...on the absorption-powers of the intestines. They proceeded as follows in order to determine the action of cocaine on intestinal absorption: They isolated a loop of gut, tied it at the extremities with ligatures, and in its middle, so as to make two chambers of equal dimensions, and injected a solution of cocaine into one chamber and an indifferent fluid into the other. After a certain interval of time they introduced into each of these intestinal chambers the same amount and quality of an absorbable material, the presence of which could be recognized and the quantity of which could be estimated with comparative ease. Such materials' are glucose, strychnine, etc., and fat. They then observed which of the two chambers absorbed the injected substance more quickly. Their experiments were performed on rabbits and dogs, and are given in full. They conclude that, while in some cases the difl"erences between the power of absorption manifested by the cocanized and the normal tract of intestines were very slight, the results were sufliciently constant to warrant generalizations. It may be said that the application of a cocaine solution to the mucous membrane of an intestine impedes all the processes of absorption more or less markedly. It remains to be seen if by increasing the dose of the cocaine and the duration of its action. the absorption-power of the intestine can be completely abolished or suspended. It must be noted, moreover, that the inhibition of absorption holds good for fatty substances as well as for soluble substances, like glucose, but the exact cause of this inhibition in the case of fats must be determined later. The general conclusion from these experiments is that the absorptionpower of the intestines is not due to...