POSTOPERATIVE ACID INTOXICATION

For the past twenty years or more there has been an increasing literature reporting serious and fatal illness in children following surgical operation, the illness apparently having no direct relation to the immediate effects of the anesthetic or the operation. This condition, characterized by vomiting, thirst, flushed face, somnolence and restlessness, and, in the more severe cases, by delirium, coma and death, has been known by a variety of names, but the general idea pervading the literature and expressed in the various names has been that it is an acid intoxication closely associated with or caused by the acetone bodies. A few authors have taken exception to this view on the ground that the accumulation of acids in the body in the condition described has never been proved, though no other evidence is offered in their support. Though there is a large and ever-increasing number of articles dealing with the