THE ACTION OF ANTITOXIC SERUM. 747 



observers 84 the following conclusions, among others, were 

 reached: "The daily administration of alcohol per os to rabbits 

 brings about a reduction in their circulating blood of haemo- 

 lytic complement [our trypsin] . . . . The administration 

 of alcohol to rabbits induces not only a marked reduction in 

 the complement content of their blood, but may cause, at the 

 same time, a reduction in the specific hsemolytic receptor [our 

 oxidizing substance] in the blood of rabbits artificially immu- 

 nized against an alien blood. . . . The diminished comple- 

 ment content of the blood-alcoholized rabbits renders the ani- 

 mal more susceptible to the toxic action by an alien blood." 

 It is plain, therefore, that insufficiency of the adrenals induced 

 by a poison reduces the bactericidal and antitoxic agency, the 

 complement: i.e., the trypsin. 



As' previously stated, Metchnikoff credits the antitoxic 

 properties to Bordet's fixatives (the oxidizing substance). The 

 properties he ascribes to the latter bodies in the following lines 

 are, therefore, those of the trypsin: "The fixatives offer many 

 points of analogy with the antitoxins," says this author; "they 

 are just as resistant to heating; they likewise show rather 

 marked specificity; and, as is the case with fixatives, they are 

 dispersed throughout the plasma." The same modifications of 

 his interpretation of the nature of these substances is also 

 applicable, however, when he writes: "Notwithstanding so 

 many data in favor of the phagocytic origin of antitoxins, it is 

 impossible to base this supposition upon rigorous and easily 

 interpreted facts such as those possessed by science in favor 

 of the phagocytic origin of fixatives." While the latter word, 

 to meet our conception, should read "trypsin," Metchnikoff, we 

 have seen, found that the diastase in the digestive vacuoles of 

 his phagocytes was a trypsin, and that it was this body, there- 

 fore, which destroyed bacteria. Our analysis having shown that 

 this process also applied to toxins and all other albuminoid 

 poisons, and that, when one of these pathogenic agencies en- 

 tered the organism, the trypsin was increased in the blood- 

 plasma through the operation of three dominant factors: (1) 

 primary overactivity of the adrenal system, (2) secondary over- 



M D. H. Bergey and A. C. Abbott: University of Pennsylvania Medical Bul- 

 letin, Aug.-Sept., 1902. 



