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Bacterial endotoxins have been administered intravenously to man under a variety of conditions: (a) during inadvertent contamination of blood or of parenteral medications; (b) for therapeutic purposes; i.e., treatment of various dermatologic ( 1) , o p thalmologic (2), allergic (3), circulatory (4), neoplastic ( 5 ) , and neurologic ( 6 ) disorders;(c) for assessment of bone marrow reserve (7), of the presence of chronic pyelonephritis (8), and of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function (9); and (d) for definition of mechanisms of acquired resistance to endotoxemia (10). Since the rabbit is generally employed for preliminary testing of most biologicals and for standardizing endotoxin preparations before parenteral use in man, assessment of the relative sensitivity of man and the rabbit to the pyrogenic properties of endotoxin is of obvious importance. Studies in this laboratory over the past decade on the role of endotoxins during gram-negative bacterial infections have permitted the opportunity to compare quantitatively the reactivity of rabbits and of healthy man to the pyrogenic activity uf three different preparations of purified bacterial endotoxins. Such quantitative comparative data employing healthy man have not to our knowledge been previously reported.Methods and Materials. Volunteers for these studies were 23-to 52-year-old healthy male inmates of the Maryland House of Correction, Jessup, Maryland. Complete medical

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