No abstract

1. In two groups of diabetic patients, one with and one without signs of peripheral neuropathy, reflex short vasoconstrictor responses to such stimuli as a cough, a sharp inspiration or sudden noise were recorded from a finger and both big toes by volume plethysmography. Simultaneous electrodermal responses to the same stimuli were recorded from a hand and a foot. Vasodilator responses to body warming were also recorded.2. Significant impairment of these vasomotor reflexes in diabetic patients with neuropathy indicates that the sympathetic vasomotor system can be involved in diabetic peripheral neuropathy.3. Loss of the reflex electrodermal responses is also evidence of impairment of another sympathetic function in such patients.4. Because stimuli vary in their effectiveness in causing responses in both groups of subjects, it is suggested that changes of central nervous conductivity also occur in diabetes.

IT is not yet universally agreed which of the two hypotheses about the secretion of insulin by the pancreas is correct; whether insulin is periodically secreted in response to a rise in the blood-sugar concentration; or whether there is a continuous secretion at a constant rate, a more recent view put forward by Soskin, Allweiss & Cohn [1934].In either case, a certain amount of insulin is required daily by the body. Furthermore, when normal men or animals, or a diabetic patient, or an animal with experimentally produced diabetes, are injected with insulin, this insulin appears to work only for a limited time. It seems then that, whichever hypothesis as to the secretion of insulin is right, there is apparently a mechanism whereby insulin is either inactivated or destroyed, or removed from the body. The experiments to be described in this paper were designed to enquire into such a mechanism.Briefly, the apparent disappearance from the circulating blood of intravenously injected insulin was observed in normal animals, in animals with the liver excluded from the circulation, or with the kidneys so excluded, or after the injection of Young's glycotropic hormone of the pituitary. METHODSRabbits of 1*5-2*8 kg. were used throughout. The experiments to observe the disappearance of insulin from the circulation of normal, intact rabbits and of operated animals, were performed in exactly the same way; the technique was as follows:I. The rabbit A, to be tested for insulin disappearance, was first given 10 g. glucose in 20 c.c. water by stomach tube in order to prevent hypoglycaemic reactions occurring as the result of the large dose of

1. The tissue reactions in rabbits from intravenous injections of live and dead Staphylococcus aureus and massive doses of indian ink and colloidal silver have been studied.2. Any particles injected into the circulation cause the accumulation of polymorphs in the lung capillaries.3. Inert colloidal particles such as indian ink are clumped in the capillaries of the lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys, and are phagocytosed by the endothelial cells.4. Staphylococci (S. aureus), live or dead, are nearly all held up in the lungs, where they are actively phagocytosed by the polymorphs within 5 minutes of an intravenous injection.5. Subsequently the cocci are distributed to the other organs, where phagocytosis continues mainly by polymorphs, but in the liver also by the Kupfer cells.6. Special attention is drawn to the localisation of the cocci in certain areas in the kidneys.7. Platelet counting on animals injected with various substances showed that there is an agglomeration of the particles with the platelets, which are consequently removed from the circulation.8. In the case of the inert particles the platelets are then restored to the circulation. With organisms (S. aureus) some of the platelets appear to be completely removed from the blood together with the bacteria.

No abstract