Abstract
This paper represents an experimental attempt to show that the morphologic alterations characteristically induced by the sulfona-mide compounds against the pneumococcus are of the nature of a phasic dissociative change rather than “involutionary”, in the mono-morphic sense. This in accordance with our position as previously outlined at the June, 1939, meeting in Milwaukee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (In press.)
Two series of mice were employed: the first of 20 animals, and the second of 10, with 10 controls for each. The animals were infected intraabdominally with 0.5 × 10−6 cc of a 16-hour veal-infusion broth-culture of Type II pneumococcus (Binda strain). Therapeusis was started in 2 hours and consisted of 4 doses daily at 4-hour intervals, of 0.25 to 0.5 cc of a 1:4 dilution of a sulfonamide carbohydrate compound.∗ Cultures and smears of peritoneal exudate were made at alternate treatments between the 3d and 15th.
After 16 hours the first response was obtained. It consisted of a marked clumping of the organisms both about the cellular elements and independently. After 20 hours, the free organisms in the smears showed capsules so swollen as to resemble a Neufeld reaction. There was also a definite phagocytosis of the swollen organisms by the polynuclear and macrophagic cells, whose margins were no longer clear-cut. Adherent to them were microorganisms and a granular material, possibly fibrin.
At this time the mucoid colonies were slightly umbilicated and microscopically contained a pleomorphic phase that, while not isolatable at this time, at the 40-hour period dissociated as a dwarf colony of non-encapsulated pneumococci reacting negatively to the Neufeld-test. It was bile-soluble, fermented inulin slowly, and morphologically the cocci were elongated to a point where they often resembled diphtheroids; or they formed long chains.
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