Abstract
While studying the effect of such substances as gelatin and gastric mucin on the phagocytosis of the pneumococcus in the peritoneal cavity of the mouse, it was noted that the animals receiving pneu-moccocus suspended in mucin died sooner than the control animals receiving the same dose in saline. In further studies we have used samples of dried commercial gastric mucin sterilized, or at least made innocuous to mice by heating at 140°C. for 1 hour in vacuo or by allowing it to soak in 80% ethyl alcohol for 1 week, then removing the alcohol by decanting and evaporating in vacuo at 40°C. Four gm. of mucin so prepared were added to 100 cc. of saline and this served as the menstrum in which was suspended an indicated dilution of a 24-hour glucose broth culture of the organism under examination. One cc. of the resulting suspension was then inoculated into the peritoneal cavity of a mouse.
The results obtained in the case of the pneumococcus II, as indicated in the table, show that death occurs much sooner in animals injected with organisms suspended in mucin than in those receiving a saline suspended inoculum. This culture also was lethal in a higher dilution when inoculated with mucin than when saline was used. A number of experiments with a hemolytic streptococcus culture were performed over a 5-month period during which mice were incubated in pairs with the mucin and saline suspended organisms respectively. The results were quite constant and, as seen from the summary of these experiments in the table, there is both an increase in the number of deaths and a decrease in the time of death for mice injected with the streptococcus suspended in mucin.
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