The third: Bact. Fraenkel and earth. Stimulus 4.5 mg.
The experiment was concluded after 10 days. After an initial local swelling in the inoculation area and an increase in temperature up to 39 degrees, the inflammation died down, the wound having broken open on the fourth day. There was no danger to the life of any of the prisoners. We succeeded in producing locally the symptoms of gas gangrene in the third prisoner. After 20 days the prisoners were released again to their working blocks.
The course of the preliminary series of experiments had proved that we were not successful in producing the same symptoms as of clinical gas gangrene. In a conference with the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS the nature of the infection and the conditions for the germs were not considered to be equivalent to the natural conditions in war surgery and consequently the experimental arrangements were varied.
Bacterium coli were added to the acrobe culture and the germ number was increased to 20 millions. Bacterium coli and dextrose were added to the mixture of para oedema malignum.
Bacterium coli were added to the gas gangrene culture by Fraenkel, and while doubling the number of germs, earth was administered to produce a similar environment. Six selected youthful prisoners were inoculated two by two with the above mixture of bacteria in the subsequent first experimental series. One of them remained untreated for control purposes, the other one was powdered with cataxyn wound powder immediately after the inoculation. The first change of dressing took place 3 days afterwards, the following each second day. Those who remained without treatment were covered with sterile layers, those treated with cataxyn (indicated in the graphs as TK-cases) were continuously powdered with cataxyn. The aerobe cultures in both cases showed local abscesses which could be easily treated surgically.
The para oedema malignum inoculation produced a local inflammation with central suppuration, small formation of necrosis in the depth and moderate emphysem of the skin. The regional lymphatic glands were not affected.
Those prisoners who were infected with Fraenkel’s gas gangrene, and who immediately received tetanus-antitoxin for the administered earth, produced by far the strongest inflammatory reaction: abscesses with deep necrosis in the area of the inoculation, emphysem of the skin with formation of blisters, and beginning necrosis collateral oedema extending from above the joint of the knee to the lower third of the thigh as far as the back of the foot. The inflammatory appearances receded considerably after the opening of the injury on the first dressing day. The effect of the opening of the wound was particularly significant in the TK-cases which started inflammations in spite of simultaneous therapy. Greater pressure of the tissue due to oxygen, liberated by the medicament, was considered to be the reason for the accentuated local inflammation.
Comparing nontreated cases with the TK-cases, the final critical observation shows:
1. Immediate therapy does not prevent the occurrence either of an ordinary suppuration or of a “gangrene”.
2. The cleaning of the wound is faster in TK-cases than in control cases.