COMPLEMENTIB1L1TY OF THE AMBOCEPTORS. 



235 



Gruber has prophesied correctly. To one who has familiarized 

 himself with the plurality of the amboceptors it will, to be sure, 

 appear a matter of course that the erythrocytes loaded with specific 

 amboceptors usually find suitable complements which cause their 

 solution, as in most other sera, so also in their own serum. As a 

 matter of fact, according to our own experience, the amboceptors of 

 the immune sera seem as a rule to make the blood-cells sensitive to 

 their own serum. But the far-reaching difference between the im- 

 mune sera and normal sera which Gruber sees in this fact does not 

 exist. 



In the following table we have collected, either from personal 

 knowledge or from the statements of other authors, 1 those cases in 

 which the combinations blood-cells a + inactive normal serum (am- 

 boceptor) b + complement a lead to haemolysis, in contradiction to their 

 behavior as stated by Gruber. (See Table II.) 



TABLE II. 



This table, which makes no pretense at completeness, shows that 

 the solubility, in their own serum, of blood-cells loaded with normal 

 amboceptor is quite common. This becomes still more evident 

 when we consider that the combinations mentioned include only a 

 limited number of the most common experimental animals, and that 

 by using other species still more combinations would be found. 



Gruber's statements therefore are all the more surprising since a 

 large part of the cases here reproduced have already been described 

 in the literature. Just this activatibility of normal amboceptors 



1 Erhlich and Morgenroth, page 11 ; Neisser and Doring, Bed. klin. Wochen- 

 schr. 1901, No. 22; H. Buchner, Berl. klin. Wochenschr. 1901, No. 33; H. 

 Sachs, page 181. 



