Rabbit Experiment

Bio 1308

Group Project

A Simple Plan: E.L. Trudeau, the Rabbit Island Experiment, and Tuberculosis Treatment

1. The Survival Curve of Trudeau’s experiment results in three variations of controlled groups. There are a total of 15 rabbits, 5 in each group, exposed various conditions to its own individual control group. The graph illustrates the estimated percentage of survival rate based on months post inoculation. Factors of environment and condition, as well as

In group one five rabbits were inoculated in the right lung and in the left side of the neck with five minims of sterilized water in which was suspended a sufficient quantity of a pure culture (third generation) of the tubercle bacillus to render the liquid quite perceptibly turbid. They were thus deprived of light, fresh air and exercise and were also stinted in the quantity of food given them while being themselves artificially infected with the tubercle bacillus. Five healthy rabbits were placed under the following conditions: A fresh hole about ten feet deep was dug in the middle of a field, and the animals having been confined in a small box with high sides but no top, were lowered to the bottom of this pit, the mouth of which was then covered with boards and fresh earth. They were deprived of light, fresh air, and exercise, furnished with but a scanty supply of food while breathing a chill and damp atmosphere, though free from disease themselves and removed as far as possible from any accidental source of bacterial infection. The last five rabbits having been inoculated in precisely the same manner as the animals in the first group, were at once turned loose on a small island in June, 1886. They lived all the time in the sunshine and fresh air, and soon acquired the habit of constant motion so common in wild animals. The grass and green shrubs on the island afforded all the fresh food necessary and in addition they were daily provided with an abundant supply of vegetables. Thus,...