382 



THE BACTERIOPHAGE AND ITS BEHAVIOR 



author obtained with guinea pigs, when inoculated subcutaneously with 

 0.6 cc. of a suspension of the Coh-bacteriophage. 



He failed to find a bacteriophage in the tissues or organs of normal 

 uninoculated guinea pigs. 



Other investigators have also attempted to determine the fate of 

 the bacteriophage when inoculated, and their results do not agree, as 

 is evident from the following resume of the published findings. Wer- 

 themann'^^s reported that after the intravenous injection of guinea 

 pigs, rabbits and frogs, the corpuscles disappear from the circulation 

 slowly. In warm-blooded animals they could be found for 5 days; 

 in the frog for 7 days. I have made comparable experiments with 

 several different races of the bacteriophage, but I have never been 

 able to detect the corpuscles in the blood 48 hours after the inoculation. 

 According to Suzuki'^"* after an intravenous injection in the rabbit, 

 the bacteriophage may be found in all of the organs, including the di- 

 gestive tract, 1 hour later. After 3 hours they are to be found in the 



TABLE 44 



liver and spleen only, while after 24 hours they have completely dis- 

 appeared from all of the organs of the body. After a subcutaneous 

 injection the relative rates of disappearance were the same, although 

 the elimination throughout was somewhat delayed. Thus, the bac- 

 teriophage was found in all of the organs after 3 hours, but it had com- 

 pletely disappeared after 24 hours. He also reports that after inges- 

 tion the corpuscles can be found in so short a time as 30 minutes in the 

 lung and in the spleen. This would certainly seem to be erroneous. 



The results of my own studies agree throughout with those of Appel- 

 mans. When ingested the bacteriophage does not appear to penetrate 

 the intestinal wall under normal conditions, but on the contrary it 

 does pass through readily when within the peritoneal cavity there is 

 some agency causing irritation. In discussing the hypothesis of 

 Bordet and Ciuca we have seen that these authors concluded that as a 

 result of the intraperitoneal injection of bacterial cultures it was pos- 

 sible to isolate from the peritoneal exudate a bacteriophage virulent 



