Abstract
Previous work has shown that the removal of the anterior lobe of the hypophysis not only prevents further growth of the normal tissues of the animal, but diminishes the rate of growth of tumors. 1 Yet in spite of the small size of the tumors the animals very often do not live any longer than the controls. Animals with the hypophysis removed also succumb to pneumonia and other infections more frequently than normal.
Providing the anatomical changes are associated with similar changes in function, this result would be expected from the work of Smith 2 demonstrating that pituitary removal causes atrophy of the adrenal cortex. Lewis 3 first showed that adrenalectomy lowered the resistance of the animals to toxins. Recently P'erla and Marmorston-Gottesman 4 have shown that extracts of the adrenal cortex which preserve life in adrenalectomized animals also increase the bodily resistance to toxins. On the other hand, Cutler 5 reported that removal of the hypophysis had no effect on the immune reaction of guinea pigs to bacillus typhosis. However, with his method of operation no animals survived which had complete operations. The immunity studies were therefore carried out with partially hypophysec-tomized animals. The following experiments were undertaken to determine the detoxifying ability of completely hypophysectomized rats as compared with similar normal animals.
The toxin used was a solution of crystalline cobra venom. Doses of this toxin can be accurately duplicated over a long period of time, a condition not true for the bacterial toxins. The crystalline cobra venom was dissolved in normal physiological saline solution to make a concentration of 100 mg. of venom per litre. This solution was injected intraperitoneally into albino rats raised in our own colony.
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