Anaphylactic “shock” in the dog. 1

Abstract

The observation concerning the blood pressure here offered is not original in that the condition of low blood pressure in anaphylactic shock has previously been described by Biedl and Kraus. 2 The phenomena of anaphylactic “shock” in the dog are, however, so different from anaphylactic death in the guinea pig that it seemed to Drs. Auer and Lewis 3 and ourselves desirable, that our work, though as yet incomplete, should be presented at this time. In the dog the chief disturbance which can be demonstrated by physiological methods is a sharp fall in blood pressure (50 to 70 mm. Hg) which continues for hours, resembling in this respect shock due to other conditions. This is unaccompanied by disturbance in heart rate or by respiratory disturbance, other than that due to the medullary anemia consequent upon the low arterial pressure. From this condition the dog eventually recovers. Death has not been observed in our experiments and Biedl and Kraus state that the animals recover. The recovery from the low level of pressure is very slow, frequently no change being observed in half an hour; at other times the upward trend begins in less time.