136 



COLLECTED STUDIES IX IMMUNITY. 



TABLE III. 



Control I. -gi-Q cc. bouillon culture + 2 cc. 0.85% salt solution =00. 



" II. Normal active goat-serum 0.04 cc. +5^7 cc. bouillon culture = 0. 

 ' ' III. Sterility of all the sera = 0. 



The principal difference in this as compared with the former 

 experiment is that the goose immune serum deflects the comple- 

 ment even more strongly than does the goat immune serum. 



Thus the objection that the deflection of complements is due to 

 agglutination has been refuted by these experiments also. The 

 behavior of the normal sera employed as controls, whose antibac- 

 tericidal power even in amounts of 1.0 cc. is very slight, will be spoken 

 of in the next section. 



B. Is the Deflection of Complements due to Normal 

 Anticomplements ? 



The deflection of complements under discussion has been ascribed 

 by Metchnikoff 1 to anticytases normally present. This objection 

 falls to the ground if it can be shown that the specific immune serum 

 exhibits a constant and distinct difference in comparison to other 

 immune sera or to various normal sera. It is entirely immaterial 

 if the normal sera also show this phenomenon to a slight degree, 

 e.g. Table III, columns 2 and 4. An adequate explanation of this 

 has already been furnished by Neisser and Wechsberg, who were also 

 the first to describe normal anticomplements. Just this quanti- 

 tative difference between immune serum and normal serum is one 



1 L'Immunite' dans les Maladies infectieuses, page 313. 



