THE PHENOMENA OF ADSORPTION. 451 



sis in "b," and strong agglutination and almost total hemolysis 

 in "c." 



(/) Sachs and Bauer take great pains to interpret, in harmony 

 with their own ideas, Bordet and Gay's experiment, which shows 

 that bovine corpuscles, provided they be sensitized, are conglutina- 

 ted and hemolyzed by a mixture of fresh horse serum and heated 

 bovine serum, that is to say, that they act just as guinea-pig corpus- 

 cles do. They conceive of horse serum as containing several comple- 

 ments, certain ones of which are neutralized by the bovine serum, 

 whereas certain others are not; as we know, the Ehrlich school has 

 no hesitation in multiplying the active substances in serum. We 

 believe it quite useless to follow Sachs and Bauer in their hypotheses 

 concerning the peculiarities of horse serum and the reason that in 

 the experiment in question the horse serum may be replaced by any 

 other alexin, for example, by bovine alexin itself, without any effect 

 on the result.* As we have already noted, when sensitized bovine 

 corpuscles are added to fresh bovine serum, the hemolysis is 

 preceded by an intense and characteristic conglutination. The 

 evolution of the reaction is absolutely the same in both instances, 

 and it is therefore clear that the mixture of fresh horse serum, 

 (alexin) and bovine serum, 56 degrees (conglutinin), acts exactly 

 the same as does fresh bovine serum (conglutinin plus alexin). 

 Certain of Sachs and Bauer's experiments, moreover, in this part 

 of their article contain important experimental errors. f 



* Bordet and Gay have also described certain experiments in which guinea-pig 

 alexin is employed. For example sensitized guinea-pig corpuscles are only slowly 

 hemolyzed by a small dose of fresh guinea-pig serum. If a little bovine serum is 

 added to this mixture, however, the hemolysfs is markedly accelerated and 

 energetic conglutination takes place. 



f For example, in table 12 of their memoir, Sachs and Bauer say that heated 

 bovine serum is anticomplementary for horse alexin, since it prevents the fixation 

 of this alexin on faintly sensitized bovine corpuscles. We shall not here consider 

 whether this conclusion is true or false. What is certain is that the deduction 

 from the experiment is certainly incorrect. In judging the intensity of alexin 

 absorption Sachs and Bauer place their corpuscles, on the one hand, in a mixture 

 of horse alexin and salt solution, and, on the other, in a mixture of horse alexin with 

 a certain amount of bovine serum. Sachs and Bauer seem to forget that, other 

 things being equal, alexin fixation, particularly when the corpuscles are faintly 

 sensitized, takes place better in a fluid containing much salt solution than in one 

 containing heated serum; this serum, as we know, inhibits alexin fixation 

 without acting in any truly anticomplementary manner. In the question in case 

 the heated bovine serum may inhibit the fixation, not only of horse alexin, but 



