*73 



points out specially that there first must be a lesion of the 

 wall. His own words state that at places where either by pression 

 or by overstretching the inner wall sustains some damage there 

 the thrombus originates. The thrombus consists of thrombocytes. 

 Now VON BEHRING can explain the symptoms of an anaphylactic 

 shock by formation of thrombi, and he can demonstrate his 

 thrombi, but he ought then to have proceeded and concluded: 

 the lesion of the endothelium has caused thrombosis, so the 

 endothelium is responsible for the anaphylactic shock! 



KRAUS and SCHIFF 30) found after injection of proteins 

 into the abdominal cavity, praecipitins both in the bloodserum 

 and in an extract from the omentum ; when they on the contrary 

 injected their proteins intravenously or subcutaneously, only the 

 blood contained praecipitins. From these observations they arrive 

 at the conclusion that the endothelium of the vessels produces 

 praecipitins. Van CALCAR 6) after having washed out all the 

 blood, demonstrated the presence of haemolysins in the blood- 

 vessels of animals who had been injected with chromocytes. 

 But in this subject too most authors have devoted all their 

 attention to the spleen. Their findings may be compared to 

 those described here in connection with bacterial antibodies 31), 

 vid. that the spleen exercises no exclusive function. 



It is probable that the endothelium of the vessels is not the 

 only endothelium endowed with the faculty of producing anti- 

 bodies. The endothelium which lines the pleural, and that of 

 the abdominal cavity correspond as regards origin and outer 

 appearance with that of the vessels. REICHE 32) has noticed 

 the pleural cavity to be more resistant than other tissues to 

 septic infections. BOIT 33) could explain this by local phago- 

 cytosis and by a bactericidal virtue residing in these endothelial 

 cells. WASSERMAN and ClTRON 34) had no trouble in produ- 

 cing bacterial antibodies in the pleural and peritoneal cavity, 

 without the interference of the blood. 



The leading idea of my own experiments was to examine 

 the function of the endothelium of the bloodvessels during 

 immunity and septicaemia. It was therefore necessary to 

 exclude the blood. I used rabbits and white rats, and the 

 bacteria used were staphylococci, pneumococci and streptococci. 



The endothelium was examined in three different conditions: 



