INFECTION AND IMMUNITY 7 



antitoxic immunity from mother to offspring is 

 an example of naturally acquired passive im- 

 munity. 



So far as maternal transmission of immunity is 

 concerned, a number of writers, among whom may 

 be mentioned Ehrlich, 1 Anderson, 2 and Famulener 3 

 noted that an actively immunized female parent 

 may transmit antibodies to the immediate young, 

 who, receiving the immunity passively, soon lose it 

 again. Famulener conducted exhaustive experi- 

 ments on goats and reached the following conclu- 

 sions: Goats immunized during gestation do not 

 transmit immunity through the placenta to the 

 unborn, but do so after the birth of the young by 

 means of the colostrum, which is then rich in anti- 

 bodies. Goats immunized after the birth of the 

 young do not transmit any immunity by means of - 

 the milk and the young, therefore, do not acquire 

 immunity from the parent. The male parent is 

 unable to transmit any immunity. In his classical 

 studies with ricin and abrin, Ehrlich showed that 

 lactation played an important part in the trans- 

 mission of immunity from female mice to their 

 immediate offspring. By immunizing a nursing 

 mother mouse (after the birth of the litter) he was 



1 See Morgenroth's article in Kolle and Wassermann's Hand- 

 buch, Vol. iv, p. 784. 



2 Anderson, Bull. Hyg. Lab. U. S. Pub. Health and Mar. Hosp. 

 Serv., No. 30. 



3 Famulener, Jour. Inf. Dis., Vol. x, May, 1912. 



