54 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY AND THE NEW MEDICINE 



But "although Gruber originally suggested that the polymor- 

 phonuclears form the agglutinins no experimental evidence goes 

 to prove this, and the experiments of Achard and Bensaud, Widal 

 and Sicard, of Paetsch, and of Kraus and Schiffmann all seem 

 to disprove leucocytic or local origin." 



"Sweet found that he could increase the complement-content 

 by the injection of substances having a positive characteristic 

 action on leucocytes." (Nuttall.) 



As to precipitins there are experiments by several observers 

 (including Cantacuzene and Swerew, Hiss and Zinsser, and Sten- 

 strom) seeming to point to the leucocytes as a definite source ; 

 and Kraus and Schiffmann "emphatically regard the blood as the 

 source of precipitins." Here again there is contradictory evi- 

 dence; but, on the whole, it may be said that a strong case is 

 made out for the leucocyte as the source of precipitins and agglu- 

 tinins, and a somewhat less convincing case for bacteriolysins 

 and hemolysins. I shall have occasion presently to refer more 

 at length to some recent experiments of J. W. Vaughan, in which 

 antibodies evoked by cancerous tissues were definitely located in 

 the large mononuclear leucocytes. 



Meantime it is to be noted that a considerable number of the 

 workers who failed to localize the immune bodies in the leuco- 

 cytes found evidence for their localization in one or another of 

 the leucocyte- forming tissues the spleen, the lymphatics, and the 

 bone marrow. Thus, according to Nuttall, "Shibayamia found 

 hemolysin for dog corpuscles in the spleen and lymphatic glands 

 of normal guinea pigs, not elsewhere." 



Again Gay and Rusk interpret the work of Pfeiffer and Marx 

 as seeming "to indicate very clearly that the protective antibodies 

 directed against the cholera spirillum are elaborated in the leuco- 

 poietic organs, particularly in the spleen, but to a less extent 

 in the bone marrow, inasmuch as extracts of these organs pro- 

 tect guinea pigs from infection before the blood serum does. 

 Deutsch essentially corroborated these findings with B. typhosus 

 and Castellani with B. dysenteriac. . . . These authors agree 

 that the spleen is not essential, as its removal at best but slightly 

 inhibits antibody formation; the bone marrow and lymph nodes 

 are secondarily concerned." 



As to hemolysins, we find this comment: "Among the fixed 

 tissues, the liver and spleen seem to have shared the honors as 

 the possible sites of hemolysin formation. Leuckhardt and Becht, 

 following the work of Hektoen and Carlson, found that the 

 spleen alone of the organs of a dog that has received goat or 

 rat corpuscles 24 hours previously has the property of immuniz- 

 ing new animals." But this experiment is not considered con- 



