A STOMACH LESION IN GUINEA PIGS CAUSED BY 
DIPHTHERIA TOXINE, AND ITS BEARING UPON 
EXPERIMENTAL GASTRIC ULCER . 0 
By XIiltox J. Rosexau, 
Passed Assistant Surgeon, Director Hygienic Laboratory, U. S. Public Health and Marine- 
Hospital Service, 
and # 
John F. Anderson, 
Passed Assistant Surgeon, Assistant Director Hygienic Laboratory, U. S. Public Health 
and Marine-Hospital Service. 
Guinea pigs dying acutely from injections of diphtheria toxine fre- 
quently show a lesion in the stomach which, so far as we know, has 
not been described. 
Our attention was first called to the condition of the stomachs of 
guinea pigs used in our diphtheria work by Assistant Surgeon A. M. 
Stimson in the summer of 1905. Since that time we have collected from 
our autopsy records 2,882 protocols in which the condition of the stom- 
ach was noted. Of these, 1,897 guinea pigs, or 66 per cent, showed 
the lesion in the stomach described in this bulletin. 
In the many thousand autopsies upon guinea pigs used in this labo- 
ratory in preparing the standard unit for measuring the strength of 
diphtheria antitoxin and also for verifying the potencj^ of antidiph- 
theric serum made by the licensed manufacturers, we constantly see the 
lesions usually found in animals dying from diphtheria poisoning, such 
as darkened and congested adrenals, effusions into the pleura and other 
serous cavities, local edema, necrosis and hemorrhagic reaction at the 
site of inoculation, etc.; but it is difficult to understand how the condi- 
tion of the mucosa of the stomach, which is so very evident in a large 
proportion of the guinea pigs, has so long escaped observation. 
This lesion may perhaps assume practical importance in view of the 
light it may throw upon experimental gastric ulcer. 
a Manuscript submitted for publication July 26, 1906. 
(5) 
