POWER OF NORMAL SERUM TO DEFLECT COMPLEMENT. 615 



all this it is absolutely necessary to conclude that the inhibiting 

 substances are already present in native serum, and that their action 

 in this serum is merely disguised by the simultaneous action of the 

 normal amboceptors. If the latter are removed by absorption 

 with blood-cells, the antilytic power of the inhibiting substances 

 becomes manifest. Gay's attempt to refute this conception has 

 thus come to naught, and all because of a circumstance in his tech- 

 nique which Gay himself perhaps not unjustly, would term a "grave 

 experimental error." 



