Abstract
Summary
1. The prophylactic effect of penicillin, whether administered by inhalation or parenterally, upon experimental pneumococcus pneumonia in rats, was negligible if the infection (intrabronchial) was produced with pneumococci suspended in mucin. If, however, the organisms were suspended in broth the prophylactic effect was such as to determine a 100% survival rate.
2. When penicillin inhalations were given at intervals of 1, 3, 5 and 7 hours following intrabronchial infection with 100 M.L.D. of mucin-suspended pneumococci, a 73% survival rate resulted (9% for untreated controls) and the survival time of all treated rats which died was lengthened compared with that of the controls.
3. If the penicillin treatment by inhalation was delayed for 18 hours after infection (permitting the establishment of lung consolidation and septicemia), and then given from the 18th to the 26th hour, at 2-hourly intervals, the survival rate of the treated animals was 69%.
4. When penicillin inhalations were given in 2 series of treatments, at 2-hourly intervals from the 1st to the 7th hour after infection and again at 2-hourly intervals from the 22nd to the 28th hour, 100% of the animals survived compared with a 100% fatality rate for controls in this experiment.
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