PROTEIN SENSITIZATION OR .ANAPHYLAXIS 301 



specific precipitates, blood corpuscles, stroma, and other 

 proteins, is in all instances the same in its physiological 

 action. It matters not whether the bacteria submitted 

 to the action of the serum be heated or unheated, the 

 result is the same. In other words, Friedberger and his 

 students accomplished with the proteolytic ferments in 

 blood-serum by the cleavage of proteins just what we did 

 nearly ten years earlier by chemical agents. We demon- 

 strated that all proteins, living or dead, formed or without 

 form, contain a poisonous group, and that the physiological 

 action of this group is the same whatever the protein from 

 which it is obtained. We split up the pathogenic and non- 

 pathogenic bacteria, vegetable and animal proteins of the 

 most diverse kind, and obtained from each and every one 

 the same poison, and now the same has been accomplished 

 by ferments. This we regard as a confirmation of our 

 statement made many years ago that the protein molecule 

 contains at least one poisonous group. Besides, the poison 

 obtained by us, when we split up proteins with chemical 

 agents, is the same or very closely related to that now 

 obtained by the cleavage of the same proteins by the more 

 delicate agency of ferment action. As we stated at the 

 time, our method was crude, and the poison was obtained 

 only at great loss, but the principle is the same. From our 

 work we developed the theory of the relation of the split 

 protein products to immunity and disease, which was 

 formulated in 1907, and which, in our opinion, is confirmed 

 in every particular by the work of Friedberger and others. 

 We fail to see why he and our German confreres in general 

 still use the Ehrlich nomenclature in discussing the protein 

 split products. Bacterial cellular substance is submitted 

 to a ferment in vitro, and broken up, and why should 

 this substance be called "an antigen" and the ferment 

 an "antibody?" The theory of sessile receptors, the only 

 theory, so far as we know that Friedberger ever originated, 

 was long ago demonstrated to be false by his own work. 

 He has adopted another theory, one which he certainly 

 did not originate, but for the establishment of which he 



