Abstract
In each of two healthy dogs was made a fistula of Wharton's duct. After several weeks a standard dose of 0.5 mgm. per kilo pilocarpine hydrochloride was injected at intervals of two or three days. After each dose the curve of secretion was followed for two hours by weighing the saliva on cotton pledgets by five minute periods.
Contrary to expectation, a normal curve was not readily established. The secretion increased with each experiment until both the total for two hours and the figure for the maximum individual five-muinte period were approximately doubled in one case and trebled in the other. After six to eight injections the results became more constant. This gradually increasing sensitivity to pilocarpine has not yet been explained.
After a fairly constant degree of sensitivity to the drug had been established each of the above animals received an injection of 1/2 C.C. per kilo of a coli vaccine (one million million killed coli per c.c.). At the height of the ensuing fever (i.e., after three or four hours) was injected the standard dose of pilocarpine. In both cases the secretion curves exhibited an unusually slow onset and a much diminished maximum as well as total secretion. The saliva was of a much thicker consistency than normal.
These experiments were made at a stage of fever in which Barbour and Howard 1 have demonstrated a thickening of the blood. It is suggested that the latter is the chief causative factor in numerous cases of diminished secretion which have been reported in fevers.
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