Effect of Bacteriophage on Experimental Anthrax in White Mice

Abstract

The possible value of bacteriophage as a therapeutic agent has received much study, both clinical and experimental. Clinical studies, particularly of such infections as those due to the staphylococcus and some other organisms from which natural recovery in a shorter or longer time is the rule, are notoriously difficult to appraise. Experimental studies are difficult to accomplish, because there are available few natural diseases of laboratory animals in which bacteriophage therapy can be practiced. D'Herelle's 1 laboratory results with typhoid in fowls, although favorable, were based on too few birds (six) to allow decisive conclusions to be drawn. In barbone, therapy was apparently unsuccessful.2 Pyle,3 working with an infection by Bacterium pullorum, and Levy,4 Topley, Wilson and Lewis,5 Richet and Hauduroy, and Bronfenbrenner and Korb,7 studying mouse typhoid, all obtained unfavorable results, as did Wollman 8 with Bacillus shigae and B. danysz. In experiments on plague in rats, Doorenbos found that bacteriophage mixed with organisms and injected exerted some protective action, but Compton, working with the same disease in mice, failed to observe any such effect when the bacteriophage was injected after the infecting dose. It will