Recently _Warburg_[209] has likewise found an oxydative depression during narcosis in the eggs of the sea urchin and in the red corpuscles of geese, and the same fact has lately been also demonstrated by _Joannovics und Pick_[210] for the oxydative activity of the liver cells of the dog. [209] _Otto Warburg_: “Ueber die Oxydationen in lebenden Zellen.” Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chemie Bd. 66, 1910. The same: “Ueber Beeinflussung der Oxydationen in lebenden Zellen nach Versuchen an roten Blutkörperchen.” Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chemie Bd. 69, 1910. [210] _Joannovics und Pick_: “Intravitale Oxydationshemmung in der Leber durch Narkotica.” Pflügers Arch. Bd. 140, 1911. This fundamental establishment of the fact that narcosis prevents oxydations in living substance is at once followed by the further problem, in what _manner_ do the disintegration processes undergo alterations during narcosis? _That_ they must be altered, and this in the form of a reduced energy production, is clearly shown by the decrease of irritability and the increase of the decrement of the conduction of excitation. Both become the greater the deeper the narcosis. The observations just discussed render these facts at once self-evident. They follow as a simple and necessary result of the elimination of the oxydative processes. If these are suppressed further breaking down, if not influenced by addition of other factors, proceeds anoxydatively. The previously observed series of processes is developed, which invariably take place when oxygen deficiency occurs and which produce in the clearest form the results of asphyxiation on the withdrawal of oxygen supply. If, therefore, the disintegration processes are not influenced in some other manner during narcosis, they must then take place in the same way as in the withdrawal of the oxygen supply. The question, if this is actually the case, can be experimentally decided by comparing, on the one hand, the development of the course of asphyxiation during narcosis, and on the other, the withdrawal of the oxygen supply. We have carried out this comparison for the spinal cord centers as well as for the medullated nerve. A prolonged series of experiments have been made by _Bondy_[211] with the apparatus constructed for this purpose by _Baglioni_.[212] Two frogs under uniform conditions of temperature were submitted to artificial circulation, the one merely with an oxygen-free fluid, the other with the same, but with the addition of 5 per cent. of alcohol. In order to render the least trace of irritability perceptible, responsivity was increased in both animals by the employment of strychnine. It then appeared that, on the average, irritability was obliterated in the narcotized frog in about the same time as in the animal simply asphyxiated. These experiments were controlled by introducing at their conclusion a saline solution containing oxygen into both frogs and by ascertaining the degree of recovery.