The Cytotoxins 169 



peutic application in cases in which non-toxicogenic bacteria 

 were invading the body, but experiment and experience have 

 shown that the laws governing their action greatly limit 

 their application, and that their effects, when not beneficial, 

 are bound to be harmful. The difficulty lies in the fact that 

 when we manufacture such serums we prepare only the 

 immune body, there being no increase of the complement. 



Fig. 31. Schematic representation of the interfering action of an- 

 amboceptors and anti-complements. A, Anti-amboceptor action: c, 

 Complement ; am, amboceptor ; aa, antiamboceptor preventing the am- 

 boceptor from connecting with the cell. B : c, Complement ; ac, anti- 

 complement preventing the complement from connecting with the am- 

 boceptor, am. 



To introduce this by itself does the patient no good, 

 because in most cases the existing infection has brought 

 about the formation of as much or more ''immune body" 

 than can be utilized by the complement. To give injec- 

 tions of active bodies that cannot be utilized is shown by 

 Comus and Gley* and Kosself to be followed by the forma- 

 tion of anti-bodies in this case " anti-immune bodies" by 

 which their effect is neutralized. Should anti-immune bodies 

 be found by this meddlesome medication, the state of the 

 infected animal would be worse than before, because it would 

 now be preparing that which by neutralizing the combining 

 affinities of its own immune bodies, would prevent them from 

 combining with the elements to be destroyed and so activat- 

 ing the complements. 



No satisfactory method of experimentally increasing the 

 complement has been devised. If, as Metschnikoff supposes, 

 the complement is microcytase derived from disintegrated 

 leukocytes, aseptic suppurations with active phagolysis 



* " Compte rendu de 1'Acad. de Sciences de Paris," Jan. i, 1898, 126. 



f "Berl. klin. Woch.," 1898, S. 152. 



