NASOGENITAL RELATIONSHIP. II PSEUDOPREGNANCY FOLLOWING EXTIRPATION OF THE SPHENOPA ATINE GANGLION IN THE RAT¹

Abstract

IN A STUDY of the mechanism of the naso-genital relationship, it was shown (1) that in a series of 127 rats treated intranasally with silver nitrate, 69 animals (54%) became pseudopregnant. In order to discover whether the silver nitrate was acting as an irritant or as a depressant, the experiment was repeated (2) using for intranasal treatment separate reagents which were known to be either irritating or depressing. Oleum sinapis (mustard oil) was used as the irritant; nupercaine, a local anesthetic, as the depressant. It was found that the irritant did not reproduce the results obtained with silver nitrate, whereas nupercaine was as effective as silver nitrate in eliciting pseudopregnancy (58 of 115 cases, 50%). The production of pseudopregnancy by the anesthetizing of the rat's nasal mucosa suggested the possibility of a nervous receptor factor in the naso-genital relationship. Therefore, in the present experiment, the condition of local anesthesia was partially reproduced by interrupting the non-olfac...