Considerable interest, controversy, and misunderstanding exists about the utility, or lack of it, of balanced saline solutions in the treatment of shock due to hemorrhage, burns, or contusional trauma. There is incontrovertible clinical and experimental evidence that, in certain circumstances at least, a balanced saline solution such as Hartmann's (lactated Ringer's) injection is of therapeutic value in these common ills. But the enthusiasm with which some have adopted the use of balanced saline solution as adjunctive, or substitutive therapy for the treatment of acute hemorrhagic shock and of burn and traumatic shock has resulted in detrimental, if sublethal, overhydration and unnecessary massive sodium loading in some patients.1
These experiments were designed to provide a meaningful, practicable method for statistical assay of the effect of Hartmann's (lactated Ringer's) injection—be it beneficial or deleterious—on the mortality of rats subjected to a severe standard hemorrhage of closely predictable lethality; the comparison bases