CONDITIONS INFLUENCING THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LIVING BACTERIA FROM THE BLOOD STREAM

1. The simultaneous intravenous injection into normal and actively immunized rabbits of equal quantities of living staphylococci or paratyphoid bacilli is followed by a distinctly accelerated rate of removal of the bacteria from the blood streams of the immune animals. 2. This altered reactivity is due essentially to specific active immunization. 3. The bacteria pass rapidly through the capillary bed of the lungs, extracellularly and dispersed for the most part, and become generalized through the blood stream. 4. The bacteria are quickly removed from the circulating blood in the immune animals and less rapidly in the normal ones, by various organs, particularly the liver and spleen, where they accumulate in enormous numbers, become adherent to the lining membrane of the sinusoids of the liver and apparently to the macrophages of the spleen and are phagocytosed by the macrophages and leucocytes in these organs. 5. Associated with this effect are morphological changes in the bacteria as shown by swelling, loss of staining power and evidences of increased cohesiveness and decreased viscosity, these changes being apparent as early as 2 minutes after their intravenous injection. 6. Inasmuch as these changes are not seen to a marked degree within the lungs or other organs, they are probably the result of a local antigen-antibody reaction of a bacteriotropic type in the two organs generally considered to be most actively concerned with the production of immune bodies. 7. By means of this accelerated bacteriotropic effect in the actively immunized animals, phagocytosis is facilitated and intracellular digestion of the bacteria is enhanced.