A NOTE ON THE DOUBLE-PEAK CURVE OF BODY TEMPERATURE INDUCED BY PYROGEN

Abstract

When a certain amount of contaminated distilled water was injected into the ear-vein of rabbit, there was often observed a double-peak fever curve, in which the increase of body temperture was plotted against time (1). D. W. Wylie and J. P. Todd (2) have recently discovered that there are several variations of the fever curves from the same culture when certain conditions are changed and also that the pyrogen from different bacterial sources differs in stability. They have suggested from these findings that certain bacteria probably produced two pyretic substances, one of which, in the medium and caused the single-peak fever curve of the immediate reaction type (extrinsic factor), and the other was contained mainly in the bacterial cell and caused the single-peak fever curve of the delayed reaction type (intrinsic factor), a mixture of both causing the double-peak fever curve.
Now the scope of our experiment is to learn the connection between the patterns of this double-peak curve and the physiological responses of animals beside pyrexia, especially, the tolerance acquired by animals against pyrogen.