Adventures in pulmonary physiology: the action of drugs on the pulmonary circulation by Alcock, Berry & Daly

摘要

Bound indoors by a rainy day it is opportune to visit an old paper with fresh scrutiny. This paper (Alcock et al. 1935) should delight experimental physiologists, scientists drawn to the bench rather than the sessile life of the office. It describes reduced lung preparations that preserve the bronchial circulation, mimic negative pressure respiration and have quantifiable pulmonary inflow and outflow rates. Seventy-two years later, few pulmonary preparations are this good. Readers may engage more avidly with this paper when reminded that this research was performed with no anticoagulants (heparin did not enter clinical trials until 1935), a brief pharmacopoeia, and the results receive no statistical treatment.