344 LOCAL TISSUE REACTIVITY 



as to the "(Icscnsiti/in^" effect ol the jilieiionienoii ol hxal skhi 

 reactivity upon anajjhyhixis in lahhits. As to tlie j^rotection of 

 guinea ])ii>s against anaphylactic slunk by means of the phenom- 

 enon, it shonkl be borne in mind that non-specific clesensitization 

 after anaphylactic sensitivity has developed, may be accomplished 

 to a certain degree by treatment of the animals with large quan- 

 tities of other antigenic stdjstances just prior to shocking with a 

 specihc antigen. Furthermore, non-specific desensitization follows 

 the administration of a very large and unrelated group of chemi- 

 cals. Among those are various pharmacological sidistances, i.e., salts, 

 lipoids, inert colloidal substances and also tetanus toxin and 

 venoms (Karsner and Ecker, 1922) . 



It is obvious from the above that no conclusions can be drawn 

 from cross desensitization experiments of Gratia and Linz. The 

 matter becomes still more confusing since these aiuhors state 

 themselves that anaphylactic shock did not protect against the 

 phenomenon of local skin reactivity. Were there any connection 

 whatsoever between the phenomenon and the protection against 

 anaphylactic shock in their experiments, a reciprocal desensitiza- 

 tion shotdd be expected. 



It is also of interest in this connection that in my exj^eriments 

 a ntnuber of substances capable of non-specific anaphylactic de- 

 sensitization failed to protect against the phenomenon of local 

 skin reactivity (atropine, general anaesthesia, local anaesthesia, 

 etc.) . Also, Gratia and Linz acknowledged themsehes that the 

 phenomenon could not be inhibited to any degree of certainty 

 by the injection of sodiimi hyposidphite, adrenalin and 

 "ephetonine." 



The lack of any relationship bet^veen the state of protein 

 hypersensitiveness and the phenomenon of local tissue reactivity 

 is further brought out by my recent experiments in ^vhich either 

 bacterial filtrates or horse serimi ^vere injected into normal and 

 horse serimi sensitized rabloits prepared by intradermal injec- 

 tions of bacterial filtrates. The skin-preparatory potency of bac- 

 terial filtrates and the duration of the ensuing reactivity ^vere 

 not increased in horse seriuu sensitized rabbits. Moreover, the 

 sensitization to horse serum ^vas repeated several times and the 

 duration of reactivity was studied after each sensitizing injection. 

 In this manner it was shown that even repeated anaphylactic 

 sensitization did not increase the reactivity induced by bacterial 

 filtrates. If sensitization was continued long enough and the in- 



