Survival of Two Depancreatized Dogs Treated with Insulin.

Abstract

Soon after the discovery of insulin, attempts were made to maintain completely depancreatized dogs with insulin. Macleod1, 2, 3 found that dogs receiving insulin and a diet of meat and sucrose survived for 8 months, whereas the addition of raw pancreas to their diets permitted the survival of 2 completely depancreatized dogs for about 4 years. Although the diets employed were deficient, Macleod concluded that raw pancreas was essential for the survival of the depancreatized dogs for periods longer than 8 months. More recently Hershey4 reported that lecithin was of value in this connection. Hershey and Soskin5 state that the ingestion of lecithin supplements enables depancreatized dogs to live indefinitely and that it cures the hepatic insufficiency that appears from 6 weeks to 11 months after pancreatectomy. However, the longest period of survival reported by these workers was 1 year and 3 months. Later, Best and Hershey6 and Best, Ferguson and Hershey7 found that the essential factor in lecithin was chol...