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Massive intravenous infusion has become an accepted therapeutic measure of wide application among practitioners of medicine and surgery, and present trends in medical practice seem to indicate even more extensive use of the method in the future. Nevertheless, comparatively little is definitely known about the physiologic responses of the body to the direct artificial addition of solutions of inorganic substances to the circulation. This is because the procedure has developed primarily at the bedside rather than in the experimental laboratory. Moreover, as ordinarily practiced, it has proved almost completely devoid of danger to life. Because of the simplicity of the common vehicles of infusion—watery solutions of sodium chloride and dextrose usually—the consideration of intermediate metabolism has not seemed to most practitioners a serious issue, and the attention of experimentalists has turned, rather, to such matters as the causation and prophylaxis of the postinfusion reaction. It is true that attention has

The therapeutic status of intravenous infusion has undergone an important revision in the last few years. Just as the discovery of blood groups and their interrelations early in the present century made possible the extensive use of blood transfusions, so, more recently, has the discovery of the so-called "pyrogenic factor" in the causation of "infusion reactions" and of methods for its elimination made feasible the extensive use of intravenous infusions. Prior to about ten years ago it was commonly held by well informed practicing physicians that intravenous injections were essentially dangerous because they always involved the risk of disrupting such compensatory mechanisms as those which maintain the acid-base balance, the osmotic tension and the viscosity of the blood. These mechanisms were conceived to be delicately balanced and easily upset. Accordingly, solutions for intravenous use were carefully compounded from "triple-distilled water" and if they were to be given in any considerable

In view of the great importance in the practice of medicine of an adequate understanding of the normal processes of absorption from the gastro-intestinal tract, one is rather surprised to find that many hiatuses exist in the knowledge of this function—hiatuses that involve rather basic considerations. This is particularly true with reference to the absorptive activities of the large bowel, concerning which comparatively few facts are known for certain and much of the experimental investigation of which is inconclusive. No one can question the ability of the large bowel to absorb certain substances, e. g., certain anesthetic substances, because of the characteristic train of symptoms which follow their administration and which could occur in no way other than as a result of absorption. Thus, one who has even once seen rectal anesthesia from ether or avertin has seen spectacular and incontrovertible evidence of specific colonic absorption. Unfortunately, however, from the