Abstract
The method employed is an adaptation of the Meyer ox carotid method. Instead of strips from the carotid, rings from the mesenteric or hepatic arteries of the ox strung in pairs were used, and from the coronary arteries as controls. Adrenalin, even in every dilute solution, constricts the former, while it causes the coronary to dilate, whether it be added to Ringer-Locke fluid, or to the ox blood serum. This method, then, based on the contrary effects produced by adrenalin on two kinds of arteries, each possessing a different reactive property to adrenalin, should be ideal for the detection of adrenalin and the separation of it from the confusion with other substances in the blood serum exerting a constrictor or dilator action. Ox blood serum as opposed to adrenalin produces a constriction of both coronary and mesenteric or hepatic arteries. Thus it essentially differs in its action from adrenalin. There is, then, so far as surviving arteries are concerned, a vasoconstrictor property of ox blood serum, not to be explained by the presence of adrenalin.
The constriction produced by ox blood serum on ox arteries occurs abruptly after a latent period of only a few seconds and is comparable in its intensity to that produced by adrenalin on the mesenteric or hepatic arteries. The duration is at least four hours, the limit of our means for recording it. Passing oxygen through it weakens this constricting property, as does time, i. e., allowing it to stand one or two days at room temperature. Adrenalin added to blood serum even at the height of a contraction further increases it in the case of hepatic and mesenteric arteries, but produces an especially marked relaxation in the case of the coronary artery.
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