Cholinergic mechanism for intestinal hypermotility caused by arterial occlusion.

A post-mortem vigorous movement of the intestine is a common finding in the rabbit. WARMOES (1925) studied this phenomenon and concluded that the increased intestinal motility would be due to the agony of the intramural nerve plexus, since the enhanced intestinal motility survived after section of both vagi and transection of the mesentery while it was abolished by either cocaine or nicotine. JOB et al. (1955) reported that anoxia caused an increase in motility of the isolated guinea-pig gut and the early phase of intestinal excitation was inhibited by morphine or nicotine. From this finding they drew a conclusion that nervous excitation through synapses would be involved in the increased intestinal motility. In this study we attempt to investigate the mechanism for alteration of the intestinal motility induced by arterial occlusion in unanesthetized spinal dogs.