Effects of experimental injuries of the pancreas

Abstract

A review of the experimental work done so far shows clearly that injuries of the pancreas produce different effects on the organism than the complete removal of the organ. After the latter operation the animal succumbs with the symptoms of subacute diabetes, but a comparatively slight injury to the organ may kill it within twenty-four hours, producing an entirely different symptom complex.It seems very difficult to form a correct idea of the etiological relation between a certain injury to the pancreas and the disease process that so rapidly kills the animal, because in all the experimental work thus far reported, an injury which results fatally in a certain number of animals, produces no effects on others.Doberauer reported (in Centralbl. fur Chir., Nr. 28, 1906) a series of twenty-one experiments on dogs. In each case he doubly ligated and severed the pancreas with identical results in all the experiments, viz., the development of fat necrosis, sub-serous peritoneal hemorrhages and free hemorrhagic flui...