Recovery of Carbon-Monoxide Poisoned Rats After X-ray Treatment. ∗

Abstract

It has been shown that illumination with visible light removes the effect of carbon-monoxide poisoning in small, transparent organisms which absorb the poison from water solutions. 1 This report concerns the effect on larger, more opaque, air breathing organisms, of a more penetrating type of radiation—the X-ray. Acknowledgments are gratefully made to Dr. L. J. Stadler, of the U. S. D. A. and the Department of Field Crops, University of Missouri, for use of the X-ray equipment and services of an operator.

Albino rats descended from Wistar stock were used; each experiment consisted of one treated and one control animal. The 2 animals were of the same age and sex and not more than 10% difference in weight was allowed. The 2 negative cases reported were cases where great difference in weight existed.

Carbon monoxide was generated by dropping formic acid into hot sulphuric acid and collected by displacement of water in storage bottles. 2 To each bottle was added 5% of oxygen from a commercial cylinder. The gas mixture was administered to the rats by passing it into a tightly covered glass jar under pressure of a constant head of water in an elevated funnel opening into the gas bottle. Each experiment was conducted as follows. The 2 rats were placed simultaneously in the gas chamber and the gas admitted. Two or 3 observers watched through the sides of the gas chamber to note any differences in apparent susceptibility and to determine when both rats seemed to have stopped breathing. The gas being shut off, the rats were simultaneously removed and laid on their backs in similar glass battery jars of 9-inch diameter. Each jar was covered with 2 sheets of wet paper toweling and the jar containing the rat adjudged to be the weaker and showing the smaller signs of recovery was placed under the X-ray tube which had already been “warmed up” by its operator.