POLYSACCHARIDE-SPLITTING ENZYMES 311 



tions were induced by the procedure devised by Goodner and al- 

 ready described in Chapter VI. 



The authors found that the injection of adequate amounts of 

 the specific enzyme twenty-four hours after infective inoculation 

 brought about an early and complete cessation of the disease. The 

 blood stream was freed of pneumococci and the organisms disap- 

 peared from the local lesion in the course of a few hours. Follow- 

 ing the administration of the enzyme, the temperature at first rose, 

 but fell within twenty-four hours to normal levels ; the local lesion 

 failed to spread and soon showed signs of healing. The results ob- 

 tained by Goodner, Dubos, and Avery in a large series of infected 

 animals indicated that in cases with severe bacteriemia large quan- 

 tities of the enzyme were necessary to obtain successful results, 

 while in animals having fewer organisms in the blood at the time of 

 treatment smaller amounts of the enzyme would suffice. 



The curative action of the enzyme was specific, at least in so far 

 as it was tested. When given intravenously in a dose of one hun- 

 dred units* twenty-four hours after inoculation with ten and one 

 hundred minimal infective doses of Type I Pneumococcus, it failed 

 to save the lives of the two rabbits tested. The authors found that 

 the curative action of the enzyme was destroyed by heating at 70° 

 for thirty minutes. 



In a subsequent communication appearing later in the same 

 year, Goodner and Dubos 535 reported the results of studies on the 

 quantitative action of the enzyme on the dermal infection of rab- 

 bits with Type III Pneumococcus. With the same Type III culture 

 and enzyme preparations similar to those employed in the previous 

 experiments, using the number of pneumococci present in the blood 

 as an indicator of the severity of the infection, Goodner and Dubos 

 determined the amounts of enzyme required to bring about the re- 

 covery of the animal. It was ascertained that the required dose of 

 enzyme bore a definite relation to the number of organisms circu- 



* According to Dubos: "A unit of enzyme may be denned as one hundred 

 times the smallest amount which will bring about the complete decomposition of 

 0.01 milligrams of the purified specific capsular polysaccharide in 18 hours at 

 37°C." 



