INFECTIONS OF THE DIGESTIVE TRACT 261 



been held that persons with pancreatic disease who are 

 unable to secrete pancreatic ferments into the intestine 

 do not develop indicanuria. This is surely a mistaken 

 view. I have observed indican reactions to persist in 

 dogs from which the pancreas had been removed, and I 

 have met with some of the most marked instances of 

 indicanuria in persons in whom autopsy or operation 

 showed both the pancreatic and the biliary duct to be 

 occluded. 



Intestinal indicanuria must be regarded as an evidence 

 of intestinal putrefaction. It is commonly easy to pro- 

 duce it experimentally in dogs by feeding a greatly 

 excessive quantity of meat. Not only may an habitual 

 indicanuria, such as is common among dogs, be increased 

 by excessive feeding of meat, but the condition may be 

 induced by excessive feeding in cases where the urine 

 was previously quite free from indican. The explanation 

 of this fact appears to me to depend on the presence of 

 putrefactive bacteria in the ileum and large intestine of 

 the dog. If we examine any portion of the large intestine 

 or the lower ileum, we shall usually find there moderate 

 or considerable numbers of anaerobic, spore-forming, 

 butyric-acid-producing bacteria as well as colon bacilli. 

 These anaerobes have the power of attacking native 

 proteids which, under suitable conditions, they may 

 energetically hydrolyze. Some anaerobes such as B. 

 aerogenes capsulatus are usually unable to carry the de- 

 composition as far as indol production. The colon bacilli 

 normally present in the intestine, however, are able to 

 make indol from peptones. It is only necessary, there- 



