Abstract
Gay and Stone have described an experimental streptococcus empyema in rabbits which presents advantages for the study of preventive and curative measures against this condition. It resembles in all details human streptococcus empyema in that it is a process of infection by extension involving not only the side of the chest inoculated but the pericardium and the other pleural cavity. The infection apparently becomes septicemic only in its terminal stages. This experimental syndrome as produced by inoculating into the pleural cavity of rabbits differs from the human process only in its method of origin which in man is by an extension of the streptococcus down the respiratory tract with more or less involvement of the lungs in the form of a bronchopneumonia.
Our early attempts to produce streptococcus pneumonia in rabbits were unsuccessful owing, we believe, to the fact that we employed a culture of a streptococcus that had not been passed through the pleura of rabbits as is the one we now uniformly employ to produce empyema by intrapleural injections. And secondly, in our earlier attempts the culture was injected between the cartilages of the trachea by means of a hypodermic needle. We have now succeeded in producing bronchopneumonia and empyema by means of our passage streptococcus culture, grown in blood broth and injected into the trachea through a catheter in the manner described by Winternitz and Hirschfelder, followed by forcible insufflation with air. This method of injection is difficult, but in the four animals that we have injected in this manner and which have died or been killed in from one to five days, definite consolidation of the lungs was evident in all and a serofibrino-purulent pleurisy occurred in all but the 24-hour case.
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