XXIV. THE QUANTITATIVE RELATIONS BETWEEN 

 AMBOCEPTOR, COMPLEMENT, AND ANTICOMPLE- 



MENT. 1 



By Dr. J. MORGENROTH, Member of the Institute, and Dr. H. SACHS, Assistant 



at the Institute. 



I. Amounts of Amboceptor and Complement Required. 



EVERY laboratory in which systematic quantitative studies are 

 made on haemolysis will have had encountered the relations exist- 

 ing in different cases between the amounts of amboceptor and com- 

 plement necessary for haemolysis. Attention was first called to these 

 relations by v. Dungern, 2 who described a hsemolytic experiment 

 with ox blood + amboceptor from a rabbit immunized with ox blood 

 + rabbit serum as complement. In this case he noticed that in order 

 to accurately find the minimal amount of a completing serum neces- 

 sary for haemolysis, it was necessary to employ a high multiple of that 

 amount of amboceptor which is sufficient to effect complete solution 

 when a large excess of complement is present. In determining the 

 amount of complement required, v. Dungern therefore employed 

 sixteen times the required amount of amboceptor. Gruber also says 

 recently that "highly prepared (sensitized) human blood-cells/' in 

 consequence of their preparatory treatment, are dissolved by a mini- 

 mum of active normal serum. 



In the following we wish to describe several interesting observations 

 made by us in the course of several years. 



We shall begin by describing a number of different cases in which 

 the relations between the amount of amboceptor necessary for com- 

 plete solution and that of the completing serum were studied. In 

 the experiments 1 cc. of a 5% suspension of the blood-cells is always 

 used. Especial emphasis is laid on the fact that in the comparative 

 tests all the test-tubes contained the same volume of fluid. 



The first experiments were made with sheep blood + amboceptor 

 of a goat immunized with sheep blood + guinea-pig serum as com- 

 plement. (See Table I.) 



1 Reprint from the Berl. klin. Wochenschr. 1902, No. 35. 2 See page 38. 



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