In this investigation 60 pregnant patients underwent serial estimation of forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume (FEV1) throughout pregnancy and after delivery. No significant change occurred in the group mean figures of these measurements of ventilatory function. When patients were divided into those who were non-smokers and those who smoked more than 10 cigarettes daily it appeared that both FVC and FEV1 during the last 8 weeks of pregnancy were slightly reduced in the smokers. Previous studies on the effects of pregnancy upon ventilatory function are reviewed. In this report individual patients had greater variation in both amount and direction of serial recordings than was shown by control subjects. This individual variation may have been responsible for the conflict in some earlier reports which studied smaller numbers of patients. It is suggested that the maintenance of FEV1 and FVC during pregnancy in spite of increasing uterine size and increasing blood volume is the result of hormonal action upon the brain stem, chest wall and lung.

surgeries and have reported our early findings.2 We extended our study to include animals for slaughter. As Drs McCarthy and Zumla refer to the organism being difficult to culture it is appropriate to present our methods, which by using a selective medium make the isolation and recognition of DF-2 organisms comparatively easy. Cotton wool tipped swabs of incisor teeth and gingival margins were placed in Amies charcoal based transport medium for delivery to the laboratory, where they were cultured using brainheart infusion agar (Difco) containing horse blood 5%, cysteine hydrochloride 0 5 g/l, kanamycin 25 mg/l, and vancomycin 1 mg/l. Plates were incubated in 95% air and 5% carbon dioxide in 95% relative humidity at 37°C and examined after three and five days. Under these conditions DF-2 grew after three days as smooth grey convex, circular colonies about 2-3 mm in diameter. Gram stained smears showed pleomorphic Gram negative bacilli with tapering ends, filamentous organisms being commonly seen. The identity of suspected isolates was confirmed using methods similar to those of Weaver et aP3 with the addition of rapid enzyme tests. In addition to organisms that conformed to previous descriptions of DF-2 others were isolated that fermented glucose, maltose, lactose, sucrose, and usually raffinose and inulin. They are thus similar to the DF-2 like strains reported by Weaver et al.4 Altogether 469 swabs were collected from dogs, cats, and other animals; the table shows the results. Isolation of DF-2 and DF-2 like organisms from oral swabs of domestic animals. Values are numbers (percentages) DF-2 like DF-2 organisms Total isolated isolated Dogs 180 44 (24) 20(11) Cats 249 42 (17) 19 (8) Pigs 13 Sheep 12 3 (25) Cattle 15 5 (33)

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