ON THE EFFECT OF COMPLETE ANEMIA OF THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM IN DOGS RESUSCITATED AFTER RELATIVE DEATH

Abstract

To determine the limits of recovery after a total anemia of the central nervous system, a series of thirty dogs was killed by chloroform and resuscitated after varying times from three to fourteen minutes. Under five minutes the recovery of function was rapid and strikingly free from the after effects which characterized longer periods. Of seven animals between the periods of five and six and one-half minutes, only one died apparently as a direct result of the anemia, but of twelve between the periods of seven minutes and eight and one-half minutes, only one, after seven and one-half minutes recovered. The remaining dogs all died. Further corroborative data are drawn from the previously published paper on the technique of resuscitation. Histological examination both of presumptive recoveries and fatal cases was made by ordinary methods and those of Nissl and Marchi. The neurocytes of the fatal cases uniformly presented the greatest change, not merely chromolytic but here and there definitely indicative of cell death. Marchi's method further supported these findings by proving the existence of fiber degeneration. Finally, showing the narrowness of the escape, the animal with best result in recovery, seven and one-half minutes in time, which at the end of four weeks had apparently entirely returned to a normal state, by the Marchi method had a degeneration of a number of fibers localized in the pyramidal fasciculi which were traced from the cord to the cortex, and in Flechsig's fasciculus, as well as a more sparsely scattered degeneration of both ascending and descending fibers elsewhere.