STUDIES ON ADAPTATION

Abstract

In a preliminary publication (1) attention has been called to a syndrome which appears when a severe injury is inflicted upon the organism. This syndrome is independent of the nature of the damaging agent and represents rather a response to damage as such. Exposure to cold, traumatic injuries, excessive muscular exercise, spinal shock, acute infections, and intoxications with various drugs will evoke this syndrome if they damage the organism sufficiently. The course of this reaction, which we have interpreted as an expression of general defence, may be divided into three stages. During the first, or acute stage, observed in the rat ordinarily 6 to 48 hours after the initial injury, one notes a rapid decrease in the size of the thymus, spleen, lymph glands and liver; disappearance of fat tissue; edema formation, especially in the thymus and loose retroperitoneal connective tissue; accumulation of pleural and peritoneal transudate; loss of muscular tone; fall of body temperature; formation of acute erosions in the digestive tract, particularly in the stomach, small intestine and appendix; loss of cortical lipoids and chromaffin substance from the adrenals; and sometimes hyperemia of the skin, exophthalmos, increased lachrymation and salivation.