The oxytocic substance of appears to be calcium. Reduction of the calcium to a concentration equaling that of an artificial cerebrospinal fluid bathing the isolated uterus abolishes the oxytocic action and yet causes no destruction or removal of true posterior-lobe oxytocic principle. Properly preserved human ventricular and lumbar fluids of normal calcium concentration have an oxytocic effect. The melanophore-expanding effect of and serum may be due to differences between their calcium concentrations and those of artificial fluids used in the limb-perfusion method of assay.
Recent studies on the functions of the cerebral hemispheres are of immediate importance to clinical medicine for the light they have shed on certain neurologic problems of general practice, such as the prognosis and interpretation of the symptoms in vascular hemiplegia, the basis of the gastro-intestinal and other vegetative disturbances accompanying lesions of the brain and the character of the mental impairment following the destruction of specific cortical areas. It is the purpose of this paper, and of the others presented at this symposium, to give a brief résumé of these studies and to point out the clinical implications. At present few serious investigators deny the existence of cerebral localization, and a small number still insist on the sharp localization of specific functions in given portions of the brain. The central nervous system has come rather to be looked on as a highly integrated mechanism each cell of which has
Numerous reports1have called attention to the fact that severe psychosis, with mental deterioration, loss of memory, delirium and hallucinosis, is not uncommon as a result of intoxication with bromides. Moore, Sohler and Alexander,2in a review of the recent literature have pointed out that "the duration of bromide intoxication from the appearance of the first symptoms to the disappearance of the major toxic signs" is usually a matter of only two to eight weeks. In the present instance a progressive mental deterioration which was present for eleven to fifteen years and culminated in a state of complete mental confusion, amnesia, disorientation and hallucinosis resulted from continuous self medication with large quantities of bromo-seltzer. Recently inThe Journal3attention has been called to the dangers of intoxication with bromides and the dangers arising from self medication with certain proprietary preparations containing bromide salts. Other instances of intoxication
