VENOM H/EMOLYSIS AND VENOM AGGLUTINATION 191 



From the above table it appears that the antihaemolytic property of sodium 

 citrate is not directed against the same set of activators as that of calcium 

 chloride. Sodium citrate has a certain inhibiting influence upon haemolysis 

 caused by venom and lecithin, but almost none against the combination 

 hemolysis of fatty substances and venom. This relation is exactly the reverse 

 with calcium chloride. 



Teruuchi ^ found that cobra haemolysin and its antitoxin are destroyed by 

 dog's pancreatic juice, activated with the intestinal juice. Cobra lecithid 

 is not affected by this treatment. Through digestion of the neutral mixture 

 of cobralysin and antitoxin by pancreatic juice a portion of the lysin can be 

 restituted. On the other hand, the combination of the mixture of cobralysin 

 and antitoxin with lecithin before digestion seems to prevent the liberation of 

 active lysin under the influence of the pancreatic juice. 



Von Dungern and Coca studied the constitution of cobra hsemolysins and 

 found that the washed corpuscles of ox, which are completely insusceptible 

 to the venom, can be dissolved by adding either fresh guinea-pig serum or 

 lecithin. This was first discovered by Flexner and Noguchi and Kyes and 

 Sachs. Von Dungern and Coca investigated whether the cobralysin is ab- 

 sorbed by these corpuscles or not. By allowing the washed ox corpuscles to 

 remain in contact with cobra venom for some hours they found that the cells 

 absorbed a certain portion of cobralysin from the fluid in which they had been 

 suspended. The evidence of absorption was brought out by washing the 

 corpuscles with saline solution, freeing them from cobralysin, and then 

 examining the corpuscles for susceptibility to serum complements and leci- 

 thin. If the corpuscles were laden with venom amboceptors, or sensitized 

 with venom sensibihsatrice, haemolysis would occur on adding complements 

 or lecithin. In fact, they discovered that the venomized corpuscles are easily 

 dissolved by adding guinea-pig complements, but not lecithin. They exam- 

 ined the venom solution, after separation of the corpuscles, for its haemolytic 

 property, and again demonstrated that it retained all its haemolysin con- 

 tent by adding lecithin, but lost all its complement-activable haemolysin. In 

 other words, venom contains two different types of haemolysins, one resem- 

 bling typical serum amboceptor, the other quite dift'erent from that class of 

 haemolysins. The latter is active in the presence of lecithin, but not of serum 

 complements, and is not absorbed by the ox corpuscles. 



Not knowing the discovery of Noguchi, von Dungern and Coca, independ- 

 dently of him, found that calcium chloride, barium chloride, and magnesium 

 chloride can prevent haemolysis caused by venom — especially that calcium 

 chloride is of much greater power than the other two. Like Noguchi, they 

 also observed that their antihaemolytic properties are due to suppression of 

 the activating property of serum complements, without preventing the ambo- 

 ceptors from being absorbed by the corpuscles. Only a slight inhibition can 



1 Teruuchi. Die Wirkung des Pankreassaftes auf das Hamolysin des Cobragiftes und seine Verbin, 

 dungen mit dem Antitoxin und Lecithin. Hoppe-Seyler's Zeitschr. f. physiol. Chem., 1907- 

 LI, 478. 



