AMBOCEPTOR, COMPLEMENT, AiND ANTICOMPLEMENT. 255 



TABLE III. 



A. 1 cc. 5% SHEEP BLOOD + AMBOCEPTOR OF GOATS TREATED WITH SHEEP 

 BLOOD + SHEEP SERUM AS COMPLEMENT. 



B. THE SAME, BUT WITH HORSE SERUM AS COMPLEMENT. 



One erythrocyte may possess just so many receptors for a cer- 

 tain poison as are necessary to bind a single solvent dose, i.e. there 

 is present just a receptor unit, whereas in other cases such a multiple 

 of the receptor unit may be present that a hundred times the ambo- 

 ceptor unit is bound. In bacteria the latter condition is present to a 

 still very much greater degree: agglutinins (Eisenberg and Volk) 

 and bacteriolytic amboceptors (R. Pfeiffer) are bound in enormous 

 excess, frequently as high as many thousand times the effective 

 amount. It is therefore entirely clear that these conditions must 

 exercise a deciding influence on the fact whether an increased amount 

 of immune serum decreases the amount of complement required 

 or not. It may be regarded as self-evident that in all those cases 

 in which only the single effective dose can be bound, i.e. in which 

 only one amboceptor unit is anchored, an excess of amboceptor can 

 never exert a favorable influence; on the contrary an increase in the 



