1890.] A Bacteria-killing Globulin. 95 



watery solution of fibrin ferment loses its power of coagulating 

 blood when heated to 75. When, however, fibrin ferment is dis- 

 solved in serum it is destroyed, according to Halliburton,* at a tem- 

 perature somewhere between 50 and 60, which agrees with the tem- 

 perature at which Buchner found the bacteria-killing power of serum 

 to vanish. On testing the effect on anthrax bacilli of a solution of 

 fibrin ferment by the above-described method, I occasionally found a 

 gradual diminution in the numbers of the bacilli, but, even in the 

 most successful experiment, it was so small as to come well within 

 the limits of experimental error. For instance, in one experiment, 

 the control plate showed 175 colonies. A plate culture made half-an- 

 hour later showed 40 colonies, and the plate culture made one hour 

 after mixture showed 111 colonies. Thus my results, though of them- 

 selves too few to decide this matter, agree with those of Buchner, 

 who also found that fibrin ferment has no bacteria-killing power. 



Can the substance in question be some other ferment, absent from 

 the plasma and present in the serum, possibly owing to the breaking 

 down of white blood-corpuscles ? 



Halliburton has recently succeeded in extracting from the leuco- 

 cytes of lymphatic glands a globulin which he believes to be fibrin 

 ferment, or else inseparably connected with it. The power of causing 

 blood to clot, the temperature at which it loses this property, and 

 its solubilities in different salt solutions agree perfectly with what is 

 known of fibrin forment. In fact, the only respect in which it 

 differs from fibrin ferment is that it always responds to the general 

 proteid reactions; while Lea and Green have obtained solutions, 

 apparently of fibrin ferment, which caused blood to clot rapidly, but 

 which responded not even to the most delicate tests for proteids. 



The following experiments show that it has the power of killing 

 anthrax bacilli, a power which, as yet, cannot be ascribed to fibrin 

 ferment. 



Methods Employed. The lymphatic glands of an animal (cat or 

 dog) are cut out, finely chopped up, and extracted with T Vth saturated 

 sodium sulphate for twenty-four hours. The liquid is then filtered, and 

 precipitated by the addition of several times its volume of alcohol. 

 The precipitate consists chiefly of Halliburton's cell globulin-/?, for the 

 other proteids of lymph cells (cell globulin and nucleo-albumen) are 

 only extracted in small quantities by the sodium sulphate solution. f 

 The precipitate is kept under alcohol till required. It settles to the 



* "On the Nature of Fibrin-ferment," 'Journal of Physiology, ' vol. 9, 1888, 

 p. 229 ; and " On the Coagulation of the Blood," Boy, Soc. Proc.,' vol. 44, 1888, 

 p. 255. 



t I learnt this in a verbal communication from Dr. Halliburton. I shall in the 

 rest of my paper refer to Halli burton's cell globulin-^ as cell globulin, or simply 

 globulin. 



