334 PROTEIN POISONS 



digested with fresh guinea-pig serum, does not contradict this 

 theory because the colloidal bodies may serve as absorption 

 agents. 



This explanation of the easy production of anaphylatoxin, 

 given by Doerr, is worthy of consideration. His failure to 

 understand how the same poison can be obtained from the 

 most diverse proteins has no weight with, us since w T e have 

 prepared a poison which has, grossly at least, the same 

 physiological action, from the most diverse proteins, bacterial, 

 vegetable, and animal. The protein molecule, wherever 

 found, must have some common nucleus, and this we believe 

 to be the poison. But that a poison may be liberated in the 

 process of blood coagulation does not seem to us to be beyond 

 the range of possibility. Blood coagulation is a fermentative 

 process and that there is no cleavage in the protein molecule 

 in this process has not been shown. 



As Doerr points out, so long ago as 1877 Kohler showed 

 that fresh defibrinated blood, whether homologous or heter- 

 ologous, is an active poison. This has been confirmed by 

 others, and recently it has been reinvestigated by Moldovan, 

 who has shown that blood freshly defibrinated by shaking 

 with glass beads causes acute death when injected intra- 

 venously into guinea-pigs and rabbits. In the former animals 

 the typical anaphylactic lungpicture after death is seen. When 

 the dose is slightly sublethal there is marked fall in -tempera- 

 ture with subsequent fever. When the doses are smaller 

 there is marked fever. On standing for fifteen to forty-five 

 minutes defibrinated blood looses in toxicity. Serum obtained 

 by rapid centrifugation of defibrinated blood is poisonous. 

 The same is true of the deposited and once-washed cor- 

 puscles. When coagulation is delayed by the presence of 

 sodium citrate, neither the supernatant fluid nor the cor- 

 puscles are poisonous, but both become so when coagulation 

 has been induced by shaking with porcelain beads. Later, 

 Doerr has shown that blood received in paraffined vessels 

 becomes poisonous; but when coagulation is complete the 

 toxicity disappears. When coagulation is made to proceed 

 slowly by the addition of hirudin solution or a 0.7 per cent. 



