An Apparatus to Facilitate Intravenous Injections in the Mouse,

Intravenous injection in the mouse is rarely used because of the difficulty in acquiring facility with this technique. Also, the belief that one or, at most, two injections per tail vein may cause sclerosis has limited the use of mice in experiments involving multiple injections. In this paper we shall describe a method of transillumination of the tail vein and our results in using it for intravenous injections. when a-beam of light, no wider than the diameter of a mouses tail, transilliuminates a portion of the tail, the vein opposite the source of light is easily seen as a red cord. This obviates one of the greatest difficulties in intravenous injections, the ability to discern the vein.