Studies on the peritoneal fluid in anaphylactic shock

Abstract

In recent years stress has been laid in particular upon changes in the physical and chemical reactions of the body fluids in anaphylactic shock and it has become evident that more or less profound changes can be demonstrated. A number of years ago Segale 1 investigated changes of the osmotic pressure of the blood in shocked animals and found that in dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs there occurred a marked fall of the freezing point of the serum during shock, which fall lasted over a considerable period of time—even twenty-four hours. As we were unable to find in literature any confirmation of these observations we undertook, at least in the case of the guinea pig, to confirm Segale's results.

We used animals sensitized to egg white and reinjected them intraperitoneally after three weeks or more. At the same time that the sensitized animals received the second injection, we injected normal animals with an equal amount of egg white. The animals were bled at periods varying from 15 minutes to 5 hours after the injections and the freezing point of the serum was determined. The average Δ of the 32 normal animals was — 0.578° while that of 34 readings of shocked animals was — 0.574°. It appears, therefore, that Segale's observations are not correct, at least as far as concerns the guinea pigs.

We thought it might be of interest to determine whether we could find any difference between the Δ of fluid which had been injected into the peritoneal cavity of normal and of shocked animals. Again we used animals sensitized to egg white; gave a second injection three to six weeks after the first injection, consisting of 6 cc. of a 50 per cent egg white intraperitoneally and also 30 cc. of sodium chloride solution.