STUDIES ON VOMITING

¹ From the Laboratory of Pharmacology, Cornell University Medical College, New York City

1. Vomiting is one of the most frequent symptoms of disease, but little attention is paid by clinicians to its significance except in certain types.

2. The sympathetic and parasympathetic afferent nerves (using the terms as they were employed by Hatcher and Weiss) conduct afferent emetic impulses induced by various poisons in different organs to the vomiting center in the medulla.

3. Ergotamine tartrate, which depresses certain of the afferent nerve endings of the sympathetic type, abolishes or lessens the emetic action of nicotine in the cat, presumably by the same mechanism whereby it abolishes the emetic action of apomorphine in the dog. It is probable that large doses of nicotine also act peripherally to induce vomiting, but we have not determined the seat of any peripheral emetic action that it may have.

4. Atropine abolishes the emetic action of magnesium chloride or magnesium sulphate, injected subcutaneously or intramuscularly, and it lessens or abolishes the emetic action of potassium arsenite injected intravenously, but it has little or no effect on the emetic action of potassium arsenite on the stomach.

5. Nicotine abolishes the emetic action of strophanthidin (like that of other digitalis bodies) on the heart, but it does not abolish the local action of strophanthidin on the peritoneum. The latter is abolished through the local action of cocaine. Nicotine also abolishes the emetic action of potassium arsenite following its intravenous injection, and it also abolishes the emetic action of magnesium chloride or sulphate, injected subcutaneously or intramuscularly. It also abolishes the emetic action of small doses of mercuric chloride on the stomach, and lessens or abolishes the emetic action of hypertonic solution of sodium chloride on the stomach.

6. Atropine together with ergotamine lessens or abolishes the emetic action of a hypertonic solution of sodium chloride on the stomach.

7. Cats were used in all of our experiments except a few in which ouabain and nicotine were administered to dogs.