Abstract
A series of about two hundred and fifty cases, including normal individuals, a large number of patients representing a variety of pathological conditions, and a group of patients suffering from symptoms supposedly due to intestinal disorders such as constipation, autointoxication, colitis, arthritis, eczema and urticaria, have been treated by dietary restrictions affecting the protein foods. About six hundred and fifty quantitative determinations of the indican, phenols, total nitrogen and creatinine excreted in the twenty-four hour urines have been made. It has been found that a decrease in the total nitrogen intake (meat and eggs) results in a corresponding decrease in the putrefactive products excreted by the same patients when on a higher protein diet. The phenols, as determined by the method of Folin and Denis 1 , however, showed much less tendency toward significant changes due to diet than did indican. In as much as Tisdall 2 has suggested the non-specificity of this method for determining phenols, our results would lend support to the conclusion that this method for phenol estimation is of little value.
The effect of feeding me liter of B. an'dophilzcs milk, prepared according to Rettger and Cheplin 3 froni Rettger's cultures, and 100 grams of milk sugar daily, in addition to ordinary diets, was studied in eight patients suffering from constipation, eczema and colitis. No milk was allowed in the diet on the control days previous to the feeding of the acidophilus milk. The absolute amount of protein in the daily diet was kept as nearly constant as possible throughout the periods of observation, although there was of necessity a decrease in certain protein foods to allow for that ingested in the milk. The time required to bring about practically complete transformation of the intestinal flora to the acidophilus type varied with the individuals studied, from several days to several weeks.
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