66 OTTO GLASER. 



The idea of attempting to isolate Lillie's amboceptor appeared 

 foolhardy to many of my friends. As it was my own early 

 attempts showed merely how it could not be done and what not 

 to look for. The first ray of positive light came from the experi- 

 ments of Richards and Miss Woodward with X-rays ('15). 

 Their results suggested that the amboceptor might be an enzyme, 

 and, as a matter of fact, by adapting a method previously em- 

 ployed by Robertson ('12) for the removal of oocytase from ox 

 blood, Miss Woodward succeeded in isolating a definite substance 

 from the secretions of arbacia eggs ('18). 



The substance in question was gotten in the form of a white 

 powder easily soluble in sea water and in fresh. It did not cause 

 the characteristic swarming and agglutination of the spermatozoa. 

 It did however have decided virtues as a parthenogenetic agent. 

 Moreover, it appeared to possess lipolytic properties. At any 

 rate, oil droplets prepared from an ethereal extract of arbacia 

 eggs, when exposed to a solution of the precipitate, decreased in 

 diameter, in the course of two and a half hours, on the average, 

 sixteen and seven tenths per cent. From this observation, Miss 

 Woodward inferred that the fat was undergoing hydrolysis. 

 Hence she called her precipitate, lipolysin. 



Lipolysin is either not-agglutinin or it is denatured agglutinin. 

 If the latter, then further search for an agglutinating substance 

 in secretions from which lipolysin has been removed, should 

 meet with little if any success. However a substance was 

 isolated from just such remnants by saturation with ammonium 

 sulfate, and the quantities so gotten appeared no smaller than 

 those-secured by the immediate saturation of the fresh exudates- 

 The body precipitated in this fashion, when freed from salts, 

 had no parthenogenetic properties. It did have marked powers 

 as an agglutinant of sperm. 



Whether Miss Woodward's further deductions and inferences 

 will survive criticism matters not at all for the moment. Her 

 results had the great virtue of preparing the ground for a different 

 attack. In addition they made it possible to explain the effects 

 of egg-secretions on spermatozoa and on eggs, in terms of two 

 chemical individuals rather than in terms of one amboceptor 

 with two side-chains. 



