Distention as a Factor in Intestinal Obstruction

The voluminous literature on intestinal obstruction has been adequately reviewed by Cooper1and Ochsner.2Although a toxemia is still generally regarded as the cause of all symptoms, a small group has dissented from this view and presented experimental evidence to show that death from high intestinal obstruction is probably due to nontoxic factors such as dehydration, decrease in blood volume, loss of electrolytes, loss of something specific in the gastro-intestinal secretions or alkalosis. The evidence for this point of view rests among others, principally on the work of Hartwell and Houget,3White and Bridge,4Burgess, Walsh and Ivy,5Jenkins,6White and Fender,7Armour and his co-workers8and Elman and Hartman,9all of whom have shown prolongation of life by restoration of the salt and water volume in animals with experimental obstruction. White and Bridge have found that the loss of chloride in the blood parallels a loss in the