Re-injection with B. tuberculosis. 



17 



certain dietary factors (referable to the nature of protein) exert 

 an influence upon the content of muscle creatine. This observa- 

 tion is being further investigated. 



9 (826) 



On re-injection with B. tuberculosis or its products and with sera. 



By J. P. Atkinson and C. B. Fitzpatrick, M.D. 



[From the Chemical and Research Laboratories, Department of 

 Health, City of New York.] 



We have stated in several papers read before this Society that 

 extreme vaso-depression was caused by the intravenous injection 

 of split products of bacterial and other origin. These statements 

 were part of an endeavor to elucidate experimentally the mechan- 

 ism by which foreign organisms and substances may possibly cause 

 intoxication, infection and anaphylaxis by neutralizing pressor 

 secretions, by removing or using up the nourishment of the host, 

 or by destroying the processes upon which depend the host's speci- 

 ficity, vaso-energy and power of reforming foreign bodies into 

 substances like its own constituents, which may be essential in 

 these conditions to its existence. 



This view includes the action of those foreign substances and 

 ferments upon the host, by which the host organism or substrata 

 gives off split products which thus produce an auto-intoxication. 



These notes carry this view still further by means of a few 

 observations on death and symptoms following re-injection in 

 animals which have already been injected with tubercle bacilli or 

 products of the tubercle bacilli and with sera. An explanation is 

 advanced that the death which followed the re-injection of the 

 minute dose of B. tuberculosis, with the long interval between the 

 first and second injection, namely twelve months, is probably due 

 to a deferred anaphylaxis or persistent increased susceptibility 

 or sensitiveness which may be present for an unusually long time 

 in some of the cases which have apparently recovered from the 

 first injection. There were not enough tuberculous lesions found 

 in this case to satisfactorily account for death. 



