AN EVALUATION OF AFFERENT NERVOUS IMPULSES IN THE ADRENAL CORTICAL RESPONSE TO TRAUMA

Abstract

Direct stimulation of a peripheral nerve (Long, 1946), and exposure of an organism to such purely neurotropic stimuli as sound and light (Fortier, 1949, 1950), has been shown to produce an increase in adrenal cortical activity. It is the purpose of this investigation to learn to what extent afferent nervous impulses participate in the increased adrenal cortical activity following trauma (Selye, 1946). The adrenal ascorbic acid concentration was determined, as an index of adrenal cortical activity (Sayers and Sayers, 1948), following local trauma (i.e., fracture and scalding) to innervated and denervated limbs. Painful stimuli are known to evoke a discharge of epinephrine. Epinephrine has in turn been shown to be capable of stimulating the corticotrophic activity of the pituitary (Vogt, 1944; Long and Fry, 1945), although it is not essential for the increased adrenal cortical activity following nonspecific stress (Recant et al., 1950; Gordon, 1950).