Abstract
B. prodigiosus, B. murii, and B. welchii have been placed in the lumen of the large intestine of dogs. The animals were killed 15, 30, 45 minutes, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 24 hours after rectal injection and the mesenteric lymph node, liver, spleen and lung specimens were removed under aseptic precautions. The tissue was cut up with sterile scissors, placed in broth cultures and further macerated with glass rods. All cultures were incubated 24 hours. Subcultures were made on plain agar for B. prodigiosus, Endo media for B. murii and B. coli; dextrose broth, dextrose agar shake tubes and brain media were used to subculture B. welchii. Ether, chloratone and nembutal anesthetics were used. No differences in bacterial permeability were noted with different anesthetics. In some animals the large intestine was washed out with saline and in the beginning of our work we exposed the large intestine by abdominal incision. Anesthetics were used throughout to make our results comparable and avoid struggling of animals during experiment. Only a part of our experiments will be reported here.
Animals killed 15 minutes after rectal injection show the highest percent of positive organ cultures. One hour after rectal injection all organs are free of viable bacteria. The 30 and 45 minute intervals after rectal injection show progressively few bacteria in the organs cultured as compared to the 15 minute time interval. Sixteen dogs were killed and organ cultures made with same technic as controls. Two showed B. coli in the mesenteric lymph gland and this bacillus was isolated from the liver of one dog. Cocci groups— mostly enterococci—were cultured from the majority of mesenteric lymph nodes and liver of all dogs.
Mechanical irritation due to the introduction of a vaselined catheter and 10 cc. of sterile saline causes the appearance of viable B. coli in the internal organs if cultured within 15 minutes.
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