An Experimental Study of the Additive and Antagonistic Actions of Sodium Oxalate, and Salts of Magnesium and Calcium in the Rabbit

The foregoing experiments establish firmly the following facts. Subcutaneous or intramuscular injections of sodium oxalate in subtoxic doses, when administered to an animal which received a subminimal dose of magnesium sulphate, produce profound anesthesia and paralysis of long duration, although the usual effects of sodium oxalate alone are of a stimulating character. This fact is, in general, in harmony with the results reported by Starkenstein who, however, seems to have used the combination of the two salts in one solution; namely, that of magnesium oxalate. The combined injections of subminimal doses of sodium oxalate and magnesium sulphate produce a strong reduction, or even, at times, a complete abolition of the conductivity of the motor nerve endings. An intravenous injection of calcium salts brings on a recovery from the profound and prolonged effects of the combined action of sodium oxalate and magnesium sulphate, which is as prompt as is observed in experiments in which effective doses of magnesium alone were given. This fact is the more noteworthy, since depressions of long duration produced by prolonged continuous injections of magnesium solutions alone do not respond very promptly and effectively to calcium injections. As will be recalled, the starting point for our investigation was the hypothesis that substances which are capable of precipitating calcium-a biological antagonist of magnesium-ought to be capable of increasing the depressive effect of magnesium. Our experiments proved that this assumption was correct. This would seem, therefore, to justify the interpretation that the augmenting action of sodium oxalate has its cause in the ability of the latter to precipitate calcium and thus increase within the body the amount of unantagonized magnesium. However, we wish to state expressly that this view is, for the present, still no more than a hypothesis and does not exclude other possible interpretations of our facts. As we pointed out it speaks against this hypothesis that oxalates do not produce phenomena of depression; the toxic symptoms produced by oxalates exhibit distinctly signs of increased and not of decreased irritability.