FURTHER EXPERIMENTS WITH THE INTRADERMAL PNEUMOCOCCUS INFECTION IN RABBITS

Abstract

1. The continuation of our experiments with intradermal Type I pneumococcus infection in rabbits has furnished further evidence of the marked analogies between this condition and that of human lobar pneumonia. 2. It has been found that the amount of antiserum necessary for successful therapy increases as the disease progresses, and that this progression has a definite mathematical character. Such a condition, it seems, can only be caused by a progressive accumulation of some toxic or antagonistic substance, the exact nature of which is not known. 3. Various lots of antipneumococcus sera have been tested for their therapeutic properties. The results from seven such sera show that this therapeutic value does not parallel the mouse-protective value. It is suggested that the rabbit technic may prove useful for the routine comparison and standardization of antipneumococcus sera since it represents a simple method for determining that property for which the serum is to be utilized. 4. The effect of non-specific therapy in this condition has been determined to be a transient disappearance from the blood stream of circulating organisms. This result was obtained with such heterologous materials as normal horse serum and typhoid vaccine but not with the homologous normal rabbit serum. 5. Rabbits recovering from the intradermal disease without treatment or with such inadequate treatment that the disease runs its normal course, were shown to have a definite though not permanent immunity. Cases in which the disease had been arrested at 24 hours by effective therapy with heterologous immune serum showed no immunity after the early disappearance of the passively administered elements. Cases which were brought to early recovery with immune homologous serum did show a definite immunity comparable to that which was developed in other animals as the result of an untreated course of the disease. 6. The immunity conferred by single and multiple vaccination is reported. The possibility of the application of such methods in the pneumonias of man is discussed and a method for such an application is suggested.