THE PARENTERAL INTRODUCTION OF PROTEINS 371 



complement of the guinea-pig serum the poison was 

 formed. But Friedberger showed that kaolin does not 

 absorb amboceptor, but does absorb the protein of horse 

 serum, and this, when acted upon by the ferment in the 

 guinea-pig serum, furnishes the poison. Bauer 1 thinks 

 that the digesting serum becomes poisonous from the loss 

 of its complement; thus, when bacteria are digested with 

 the normal serum of the guinea-pig the bacteria absorb 

 the complement from the serum and on account of this 

 loss the serum becomes poisonous. Bauer thinks that de- 

 complemented serum acts as an anaphylactic poison. This 

 claim is deserving of further study. The ease with which 

 Friedberger and his students prepare anaphylatoxin from 

 all kinds of bacteria by digesting them with normal guinea- 

 pig serum has caused some to suspect some flaw in the 

 experiment. Besredka and Strobel 2 claimed that the 

 poisonous effect obtained is due to traces of peptone trans- 

 ferred from the medium on which the bacteria have been 

 grown, and that when bacteria grown on peptone-free 

 media were employed the results were negative. They also 

 found that when peptone-agar was digested with normal 

 guinea-pig serum the latter became poisonous. In answer 

 to this communication, Lura 3 stated that bacteria grown 

 on peptone-free agar and those grown on potato furnish 

 the poison, when digested with serum, just as abundantly 

 as those grown on peptone-agar. The work of Lura has 

 been confirmed by others, and if there be a flaw in the 

 preparation of anaphylatoxin by digesting bacteria with 

 normal guinea-pig serum it has not been detected up to 

 the present time. 



Pearce and Eisenbrey 4 showed by the following experi- 

 ment that the specific ferment formed in sensitization is, 

 under certain conditions at least, a product of the fixed 

 cells: "Our procedure has been to exsanguinate, under 



1 Berl. klin. Woch., 1912, 344 



2 Compt. rend, de la Soc. biol., 1911, Ixxi. 



3 Zeitsch. f. Immunitatsforschung, 1912, xii, 701. 



4 Journal of Infectious Diseases, 1910, vii, 565. 



