The Effect of Anesthesia and Age on Respiration Following Bilateral, Cervical Vagotomy in the Fowl

Abstract

A SURVEY of the literature on the effects of bilateral, cervical vagotomy on respiration of Aves and Mammalia indicates a striking change through time in the type of experimental results reported. All of the very early experimentation (before 1830, see Legallois, 1830) on both phylogenetic classes indicated that the rate of respiration was profoundly slowed and was generally accompanied by a greatly increased tidal volume. Thus, Blainville (1808) and Boddaert (1862) reported that the effects of vagotomy on respiration were similar in rabbits, dogs, pigeons and chickens. Legallois (1830), in an extensive literature review covering all earlier work dating back to the time of Rufus of Ephése, who lived in the first Century A.D., concluded that respiration was profoundly depressed by the operation. Towards the end of the 19th century, physiologists (notably Traube, 1871, quoted by Reichsman, 1946) who were primarily interested in the study of the occurrence of…