PSEUDOHERNIA, A VISIBLE MANIFESTATION OF LOCAL ANESTHETIC ACTION

¹ From the Laboratories of The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, N. Y.

1. "Pseudohernia," a steep protrusion rising from the abdomen of a guinea pig at the site of hypodermic injection, is described as an action of every soluble local anesthetic.

2. The pseudohernia effectivity of different local anesthetics was determined and was compared with their power to produce other effects. By excluding its interconnection with those other partial effects, the assumption is reached that the pseudohernia producing mechanism consists in a lowering of the proprioceptive reflex tonus of the abdominal wall muscle through a local anesthetic action upon the receptive point of the reflex arc.

3. According to this mechanism, pseudohernia effectiveness was found to be paralleled, on the whole, by anesthetic effectiveness, the former being, however, several times higher than the latter.

4. The physiological and pharmacological significance of the proprioceptive pseudohernia are discussed. Attention is drawn to this pseudohernia phenomenon as a method to render visible local anesthetic effects.