In the dogs bilaterally splanchnicotomized, without or with removal of the sympathetic ganglia in the abdominal cavity, peptone alone, adrenaline infusion alone and both drugs together were injected into veins. Adrenaline hydrochloride was in fact intravenously administered just with the velocity with which epinephrine is liberated from the suprarenals when such a dose of peptone is applied. The velocity of epinephrine liberation on poisoning with peptone of 0.1 to 0.3 grm. per kilo, utilized as the pattern in the present investigations, was the mean calculated from five dogs of Watanabe, which showed rather common outcome, that is a moderate acceleration in the epinephrine discharge on receiving the above mentioned dosage.
The hyperglycaemia with adrenaline, given in the amount and manner above mentioned, was clearly smaller than that induced by peptone alone in such a dose or by peptone with adrenaline. Peptone alone, in doses applied, induced hyperglycaemia of a large magnitude, and when both drugs were injected in combination the hyperglycaemia was either wholly similar or definitely smallar than that obtained by peptone alone. Summation of glycaemic effect of both drugs was seen only exceptionally.
It may be thus concluded that epinephrine liberation occurring in the peptone intoxication has not only no share in the production of the hyperglycaemia appearing there but on the contraty rather acts sometimes to reduce it.