Total Water and Chloride Content of Dehydrated Rats

The circumstances present in upper intestinal obstruction which may be expected to reduce the water content of the body are fasting with water deprivation and a continued loss of secretions into the stomach. According to the data obtained from the above described experiments with rats, loss of body water during the first third of the survival period following pyloric obstruction is more than half accounted for by fasting with water deprivation. This body water is accompanied by a parallel loss of solids and may be regarded as a waste product of the consumption of body fat, glycogen, and protoplasm. Its loss does not disturb the per cent water content of the body tissues. The water lost into the stomach is responsible for an actual excess of water reduction over consumption of solids. Except in the case of the skin and blood, this excess loss of water is extremely small and produces a reduction of the per cent water content of tissues which is so slight as to permit the surmise that the water loss here derives entirely from the interstitial fluid of the tissues and that no dehydration of tissue cells occurs. The data are, however, not directly informative on this point. The total loss of body water during 12 hours following pyloric obstruction was found to be 12.6 per cent of the water content of a control animal. More than one-quarter (28.3 per cent) of the total body content of chloride ion was found to be lost and was entirely accounted for by the amount of chloride found in the gastric contents. Nearly half of the chloride loss derives from the skin. Data are presented which demonstrate that lower intestinal obstruction causes slight, if any, depletion of the water content of the body.