PROTEIN SENSITIZATION OR ANAPHYLAXIS 227 



Rosenau and Anderson, 1 Kraus and his students, 2 and 

 others. The first mentioned sensitized animals with sub- 

 tilis, colon, typhoid, anthrax, and tubercle bacilli. The 

 second dose given after eleven days or longer induced 

 anaphylactic symptoms. In some instances repeated 

 injections seem to be necessary in order to induce a high 

 degree of sensitization. The evidence concerning the 

 specificity of bacterial anaphylaxis is somewhat conflicting. 

 Kraus and Doerr sensitized guinea-pigs with intraperitoneal 

 injections of one loop or less of cultures of typhus, dysentery, 

 cholera, v. Nasik and v. El-Tor. A second injection of a 

 maceration of homologous cultures given intravenously 

 after from twenty to twenty-five days was followed by 

 marked dyspnea, discharge of urine and feces, and coma. 

 Some recovered, but others died within ten minutes. These 

 investigators found this reaction strictly specific. In 

 another experiment they found that animals sensitized with 

 a maceration of the dysentery bacillus did not respond to 

 the toxin of this bacillus, but did to a second treatment 

 with the maceration. There is no proof that toxins sensi- 

 tize. Delanoe sensitized guinea-pigs to the typhoid bacillus. 

 He secured the most marked effects when sensitization was 

 induced by repeated injections, and one month or longer 

 elapsed before the test injection. He did not find the 

 reaction markedly specific. Vaughan and Wheeler sensi- 

 tized guinea-pigs to colon, typhoid, and tubercle proteins, 

 and in this way secured a certain degree of immunity to 

 living cultures. They also sensitized animals with the 

 non-poisonous proteins of the colon and typhoid bacilli, and 

 secured the same degree of immunity to living cultures. 

 This subject will be enlarged when we discuss the relation 

 of anaphylaxis to the infectious diseases. 



The purest known proteins act as sensitizers. Even the 

 crystallized proteins as hemoglobin, crystalline egg-white, 

 and such pure vegetable proteins as edestin and excelsin 



1 Loc. cit. 



2 Wien. klin. Woch., 1908, Nos. 18, 28, and 30. 



