EXPERIMENTS WITH WHITE RATS 



25 



CHART 6 



Graph indicating average percentages of B. acidoph- 

 ilus appearing in the various parts of the intes- 

 tine of rats fed on a dextrin diet 



joo 



60 

 JO 

 60 



•50 



<0 



T 



o 



Bread /O 

 Beef v5 



Parts of alimentary canal 



i 



a 









Of the many experiments conducted on the implantation of B. acid- 

 ophilus in the absence of any added carbohydrate the following are pre- 

 sented here as typical. Three rats were placed on the basal diet for 

 ten days ; after developing the usual mixed flora, two cubic centimeters 

 of the suspension of living organisms were added daily to the bread and 

 meat. Two days after the first feeding of the suspension B. acidophilus 

 was observed in appreciable numbers in the plates and Veillon tubes. 

 The maximum transformation was reached within three to eight days 

 and persisted throughout the experiment. B. acidophilus was found 

 to predominate to the same extent as in the experiments in which lactose 

 and dextrin were fed. (See Table 9 and Chart 13.) 



Post-mortem examinations of the different sections of the digestive 

 tract revealed the presence of the above organism throughout the in- 

 testine. (See Table 10 and Chart 14.) There was a higher propor- 

 tional representation of B. acidophilus in the duodenum and jejunum 

 than in the lactose- and dextrin- feeding experiments ; in all other re- 

 spects the bacteriological findings were essentially the same. 



