1902,1 ABBOTT AND BERGEY — ALCOHOLIC INTOXICATION. 141 



cous membrane, thereby impairing the nutrition of the animal to 

 such an extent as to create conditions analogous to starvation, a 

 state in which susceptibility is also seen to be increased ; or, to a 

 diminution in the alkalinity of the blood through the acids result- 

 ing from the oxidation of the alcohol — such reduction in alkalinity, 

 though slight, has since been shown by Laitinen to occur ; or, to 

 the remote action of the alcohol on the nervous system. The value 

 of neither of these hypotheses was, however, susceptible of ready 

 determination, so that the matter rested there for a time. 



During the past three or four years a series of brilliant investiga- 

 tions, especially by Bordet, Buchner, Metschnikoff, Ehrlich and 

 Morgenroth and their associates, upon certain physiological phe- 

 nomena peculiar to the blood and other fluids of the body, have 

 acquainted us with many hitherto obscure and unknown phases of 

 the subject. One of these newly discovered blood reactions seemed 

 especially adapted to the solution, in part at least, of our problem. 



It has been demonstrated by the investigators named that an 

 animal may be rendered immune from the intoxicating effects of 

 the blood of another species ; that when such immunity is estab- 

 lished the blood serum of the immune animal rapidly and com- 

 pletely dissolves the erythrocytes of the alien blood, even when 

 mixed with them in a test tube (haemolysis); that if such immune 

 serum be heated for thirty minutes to 55°-56° C. it loses its hasmo- 

 lytic power ; and that the power of haemolysis is at once restored 

 to the heated serum by the addition of a few drops of serum from 

 a normal mammal. These reactions are believed to occur through 

 the agency of two bodies present in the serum — the one a body re- 

 sistant to low degrees of heat, a "receptor" or ''intermediary" 

 body ; ^ the other a complementary something, perhaps a ferment, 

 common to all mammalian serums, that is destroyed by heat. The 

 *' receptor" or "intermediary body" is conceived to have the 

 property of fixing the invading cells (in this case the blood cells of 

 another species) on the one hand, and the complementary, ferment- 

 like body on the other, bringing and holding them together in a 

 way most favorable to the destructive action of the ferment upon 

 the invading cell. The destruction of bacteria by the fluids of the 

 body is thought to take place in an analogous manner, it being as- 

 sumed that in the blood are "receptors" having the property of 



1 Synonyms— Anticorps hemoljtique, Substance preventive, Immune Korper, 

 Amboceptor, Philocytase, Desmon, Copula, Substance sensibilisatrice, Fixateur. 



