"DEATH FROM SHOCK."

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 11 September 1914, Page 2

"DEATH FROM SHOCK."

WHAT THE TERM MEANS

Dr. Yendell Henderson, Professor of Psysi'ology in the Yale Medical School, New Haven, Conn., U.S.A., speaking at a meeting of the general pathology section of the International Medical Congress in Lon- j don last month, said that shock, in the broad sense in which the term is often used, was not a single clear-cut disorder, but a group of conditions of superficially similar appearance. Th« term was also applied to various forms of sudden death. Tt was one of the omnium gatherums of medicine, and probably included as many diverse states of superficially similar appearance as were grouped, for example, under the terms insanity or rheumatism. Shock originally meant concussion. When th* first term came into use a century or more ago surgeons had only the vaguest comprehension of what we may understand as the functions of the nervous system. They supposed that when a cannon ball carried away an arm or a leg the jolt or jar to the body had essentially the same effect as a blow on the head with a baseball or a cricket bat. It was significant of the largely metaphorical sense in which the term Was used that concussion of the brain was no longer spoken of as shock. Dr. Henderson quoted typical cases, and maintained that shock in the sense of failure of the circulation was due, not to fatigue or paralysis |or inhibition of failure of any sort lin the vaso-motor centra, but to processes which decreased the blood volume, and which resulted in a cir- ! dilatory condition practically identi--1 eal with those produced by hemorrhage. The attention of investigators in this subject should be devoted to the discovery of the factors controlling the blood volume under normal ana abnormal conditions. Dr. Orile, of Cleveland, Ohio, contributed a paper on the subject and went into details of experiments he had made on animals in this connection With „'-rd to emotional shock in rabbits subji.-rt-ed to the mental stimulus of \e : .v alone, the bruin cell* showed precisely the same changes as those from physical injury. As a result of strong fear repeated daily for two weeks, as many as 18 per cent, of the Purkinje cells were actually destroyed, and many anumals died.