During the last two decades, a vast amount of interesting work has been done on acute intestinal obstruction in an endeavor to find the lethal factors involved. Beyond keeping the subject alive in the experimental field, much of the work has added little to the ultimate settlement of the questions at issue. Complicated operative procedures, ether and morphin anesthesia, methods used because of preconceived premises of toxic substances, and the failure to recognize different types of obstruction have been the main stumbling blocks.
In the preceding papers,1 we have demonstrated that experimental obstruction produced under local anesthesia gives most ideal results. The postoperative animals are in practically the same condition as the human patients seen clinically. The only complicating factors in the experimental work are the procain anesthesia and the 3 inch (7.6 cm.) incision through the linea alba.
Carefully checked control animals on which only the abdominal incision has