The influence of streptomycin and streptothricin on the intestinal flora of mice.

In the course of the past three years, two antibiotic agents named streptothricin (Waksman and Woodruff, 1942) and streptomycin (Schatz, Bugie, and Waksman, 1944) have been isolated and shown to be active against gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria in vitro. Additional studies (Robinson, .Graessle, and Smith, 1944; Jones, Metzger, Schatz, and Waksman, 1944; Robinson, Smith, and Graessle, 1944) showed both drugs to be active in vivo as well as in vitro. The fact that both streptomycin and streptothricin are water-soluble, stable preparations which are not readily absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract following oral administration (Robinson, Stebbins, and Graessle, unpublished) suggests that these antibiotic agents might be of value in bacillary dysentery and other infections associated with the gastrointestinal tract. In the present investigation, an attempt was made to determine the effect of streptomycin and streptothricin in enteric infections by measuring the effect of these agents on the intestinal flora of mice.