An Interpretation of the Nature of Hodgkin's Disease: III. Report of a Neoplasm in the Rabbit which Corresponds Closely to Hodgkin's Disease in Man

Abstract

Malignant tumors of the hematopoietic tissue in the rabbit are rare. Feldman (1) records a case of lymphosarcoma. Schultze (2) reports the occurrence of a sarcoma which he succeeded in transplanting. Some of the animals which were given tumor transplants developed a leukemia, and Schultze (3) observed that “the same agent may cause sarcoma, sarcomatosis, and leukemia in the rabbit.” Jianu and Netta (4) record the occurrence of a generalized sarcoma in a rabbit which had been inoculated with an emulsion of a lymph node from a case of Hodgkin's disease in man, but they believed the sarcoma to be a coincidence rather than due directly to the material which they had inoculated. Polson (5) reports a case of lymphosarcoma which he did not regard as of the Hodgkin's type. We have been unable to find in the literature any instance of neoplasia in the rabbit corresponding to the gross and histopathological lesions to be reported in this paper. During the past ten years we have used many hundreds of rabbits in our experimental work on tuberculosis, the large majority of these having been raised in our own breeding colony. Except for the case recorded here and two carcinomata of the uterus in old breeding does, no evidence of malignancy has been observed. Since our stock consists in large part of hybrids, it is not possible to trace the ancestry of the rabbit in which the tumor occurred. A hybrid doe of black and white stock was given a single intravenous injection of heat-killed Brucella abortus in February 1932, and was kept to determine how long after the initial appearance of complement-fixing and agglutinin antibodies these immune substances could be demonstrated. The rabbit was kept in a cage by itself throughout the period of observation, and was handled only for the withdrawal of small samples of blood from an ear vein at infrequent intervals. The sole observation of note from 1932 to 1936 was a complete loss of hair and a marked degree of emaciation in 1933. Such a condition has been recorded in other animals and has per se no relation to the injection of Br. abortus. The animal fully recovered and appeared in good condition thereafter. It died in March 1936, a little over four years after inoculation.