THE FATE OF TYPHOID BACILLI WHEN INJECTED INTRAVENOUSLY INTO NORMAL RABBITS

Typhoid bacilli are agglutinated promptly in the circulating blood of normal rabbits and quickly removed from the blood stream. The clumped bacilli accumulate in the organs and are taken up by assembled polymorphonuclear leucocytes in the liver, spleen, and possibly other organs. The phagocyted clumps of bacilli are digested and destroyed by the phagocytes. Hence, destruction of typhoid bacilli intra vitam is brought about by an entirely different process than is the destruction by serum and whole blood in vitro. While the latter is caused by bacteriolysis, the former results from agglutination and intraphagocytic digestion. Lysis by fresh blood serum is not appreciably affected by spleen or kidney pulp, but it is inhibited by liver pulp. The action of the liver is referable to its biliary constituents, which exert anticomplementary action. Probably in certain examples of typhoid fever in man the typhoid bacilli in the circulating blood being inagglutinable cannot be removed by the organs and hence are not phagocyted and destroyed. The observed disparity between the ready destruction of typhoid bacilli by serum and shed blood and the resistance sometimes offered by the bacilli in the infected body is explained by the essential differences in the destructive processes in operation within and without the body.