The Blood Sugar Level and the Epinephrin Content of the Suprarenals of the Rabbit in Diphtheritic Intoxication

Abstract

1. Intravenous administration of the diphtheria poison invariably calls forth hyperglycaemia in the normal nourished rabbit, when the toxical quantity is so large that the rabbit dies within 24 hours following the injection. The blood sugar content begins to increase immediately after injection, reaches the maximum in 3-5 hours and then decreases gradually. The poisoning brings about depletion of the epinephrin storage of the suprarenal glands. The loss is small in the first hours, but it becomes suddenly remarkable at about the sixth hour of intoxication, and then grows small again, so that the normal value is to be detected at the 8.-9. hour of poisoning. The double splanchnectomy is capable of arresting the occurrence of the hyperglycaemia as well as of the epinephrin exhaustion due to the diphtheira intoxication completely; so they are of central origin. 2. When the toxin quantity is so selected that the rabbit necessarily can live over one day or more, though somewhat moribund, not only hyperglycaemia is missed on the day of inoculation, but in 24 hours or later after injection hypoglycaemia is to be unmistakably observed; at that time the suprarenal epinephrin and liver glycogen diminish in a marked way. The double splanchnectomy can not protect the animal from diminution of these three substances. That the diphtheria intoxication itself is directly responsible for the diminutions in the last, dying stage of intoxication seems improbable.