I wasn't going to reply to this until I saw Larry's bit about rabbit heart
punctures. I can remember (I graduated in 73) doing a heart puncture on my
rabbit and killed the poor thing. When we cut open the chest it looked like
I used the needle to shred his heart. The only way to get enough blood for
our serology experiment was to siphon the chest cavity. My partner's blood
drawing was much better. Since my rabbit was our negative control I asked
the prof permission to clean it and take it home for dinner. He agreed -
actually he gave me the idea since he used to do it all the time until his
wife got sick from Staph toxins.
Our demonstration of anaphylaxis used a guinea pig and a massive injection
of histamine. We noticed all the symptoms as the poor thing died. We also
did a demonstration of gas gangrene by injecting the peritoneum of a
rabbit.with a little horse manure and then isolating the Clostridium
perfringens from the gut.
Parasitology was even more graphic. Every week we had a live animal to
dissect and collect the parasites.
--
John Gentile President, Rhode Island Apple Group
"I never make mistakes, I only have unexpected learning oportunities!"
RIAG Web page: www.wbwip.com/riag/
> From: Larry Farrell <farrlarr at isu.edu>
> Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com> Newsgroups: bionet.microbiology
> Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 14:36:03 -0700
> Subject: Re: (NONE)
>> Lots of things that used to be done to animals would be considered gross today
> (they really were considered gross then, too, but nobody dared complain about
> them). I can vividly remember doing intraorbital bleedings of mice (stick a
> Pasteur pipette in the corner of the eye and exert a little negative pressure
> to
> pull out a small amount of blood), intracranial inoculations of mice with
> Cryptococcus (you had to use the old time steel needles since the disposables
> wouldn't hold up to drilling through their little skulls) and cardiac
> punctures on
> rabbits to get larger amount of blood than could be obtained from the marginal
> ear
> vein (and if you want to talk about squeaks, you should hear a rabbit when a
> student goes too far and pierces both sides of the heart and pericardium). I
> can
> also remember when the first day of the lab for Immunology and Pathogenic
> Microbiology involved each student doing a venipuncture on his/her partner!
> Talk
> about ashen faces!!
