Neuroendocrine Response and Shock

The concept of shock has evolved throughout the centuries, since the early descriptions of traumatic injury. Hippocrates (460–380 BC) recognized certain principles of wound care, such as elevating an injured limb; however, at that time the correlation between blood loss and death had not yet been identified. In the twentieth century, two physiologists, Cannon and Bayliss, developed studies in laboratory animals, postulating that systemic responses resulting from severe muscle injury were caused by a toxin that caused motor tonus loss, venous blood sequestration, and hypotension [1].