STUDY OF MOLECULAR ADHESION. 435 



believe that the inhibiting action is not due to a decalcifying power 

 of the citrate, the oxalate or the fluoride. If it were so, we should 

 expect to find a distinct parallelism between the intensity of the 

 anticalcium property of the citrate or oxalate and their antihemo- 

 lytic property. Such, however, is not the case. Sabatani (Archiv. 

 Ital. de Biol., 1901, Vol. 3G) has shown that if we regard the anti- 

 calcium power of the oxalate as 1, the similar power in the citrate 

 may be represented by 0.45. According to this author the anti- 

 coagulating property of each of these salts is exactly parallel to 

 their anticalcium property. This, however, is not true as regards 

 their antihemolytic effect. We have found, indeed, that if we 

 represent the antihemolytic action of the oxalate as 1, the 

 corresponding action of the citrate would correspond to 3 as 

 regards hemolysis by venom, to 1.45 in hemolysis with lecethid, 

 and to 1.5 with alexin hemolysis. 



We have found that if amounts of oxalate which are entirely 

 sufficient to decalcify the serum are added to undiluted alexin or to 

 concentrated venom, and allowed to remain with them for 24 hours, 

 on removal of the calcium oxalate that has been formed, these 

 mixtures, when suitably diluted, are quite as hemolytic as if no 

 oxalate had been mixed with them. 



Inasmuch as the citrate does not act as a decalcifying agent, we 

 are forced to compare its action on animal hemolysins with its action 

 on the insoluble substances which we have previously studied. 

 To render the analogy complete it would be necessary, in order to 

 produce an inactivation of the hemolytic agents in a citrated 

 medium, that an inhibition to the adsorption of these substances 

 by the corpuscles should exist. This we find to be the case: if in a 

 citrated medium blood corpuscles and any one of the hemolysins 

 which we have mentioned are mixed, the supernatant fluid subse- 

 quently removed may be shown on reactivation with CaCl 2 to 

 contain the hemolytic agent 



It would seem, then, that sodium citrate prevents the action of 

 eel serum, venom, lecithid and alexin on red blood cells in the same 

 way that it prevents similar action by such substances as barium 

 sulphate, calcium fluoride and mastic. We have seen that the 

 inhibition of hemolysis by insoluble substances like barium sulphate, 

 by means of citrate, is due to the formation of complexes such as 



