Knowledge concerning blood volumes has been limited until recent years by the lack of any reliable method that could be applied to living patients. Information about the blood volume is desirable both for the study of anemia and of disturbances in the water metabolism. The work reported in this and the three subsequent papers was undertaken from the latter viewpoint.There are two reliable methods of determining blood volumes which may be applied to patients. They are (a) the carbon monoxide method, first adapted to man by Haldane and Smith (1) and (b) the dye method of Keith, Rowntree and Geraghty (2). The former method gives results that are probably a little lower than the actual blood volume whereas the latter gives results a little higher than the actual blood volumes. The high results by the dye method have been shown by Smith (3) to be due to transfusion of part of the dye into the lymph.However, the amount of dye disappearing in the lymph is small and fairly constant and the method is accurate for comparative results.Our knowledge of blood volumes has been recently reviewed by Erlanger (4). In the present paper, only such results as seem to concern this work will be mentioned.

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This prospective, controlled study was undertaken to determine whether addition of adrenaline or fentanyl to bupivacaine or warming of the injectate had any effect on the incidence of shivering following extradural analgesia in the labouring parturient. Eighty-four patients were sequentially allocated to four groups (control, warm injectate, extradural adrenaline and extraduralfentanyl). The adrenaline group had the highest incidence of shivering, the warm injectate and fentanyl groups the lowest. Extradural fentanyl also seemed promising in reducing shivering in pre-block shiverers. This paper also explores the rapidity of temperature decay of solutions ofbupivacaine in different clinical situations.

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