CEREBRAL EDEMA AND HEADACHE FOLLOWING CARBON MONOXID ASPHYXIA

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this investigation has been to learn something of the physiologic mechanism causing a particular symptom: the headache suffered by persons exposed to carbon monoxid gas. Headache from this cause is extremely common among workers in special occupations: automobile repairing, blast furnace work, mining, etc., and with the increasing problem of motor exhaust gas in our city streets,¹it becomes of especial interest to learn more exactly how the central nervous system is affected. This question is not only of clinical interest, but is of particular interest from a purely physiologic point of view. Carbon monoxid has been widely used by physiologists as an agent to produce anoxemia, and the laws governing its absorption and liberation from the blood have been carefully studied. By clinicians its action has been less well understood, but it has been thought by several authors to be directly toxic to nervous