132 IMMUNE SERA 



horse complement before it could unite with the 

 cell. Bordet and Streng 1 studied this phenomenon 

 exhaustively, and insisted that the bovine serum did 

 not act as an immune body because an immune body 

 is very actively absorbed by a cell even in the 

 absence of complement, and that the sensitizing 

 action of bovine serum was due to a colloid which 

 acted only when a sensitizer which was present in 

 the active horse serum, acted first on the cell 

 and thus enabled the complement to bring about 

 haemolysis. They named this colloid "conglutinin." 

 A conglutinin reaction based on these studies has 

 been used with a fair amount of success in the diag- 

 nosis of glanders and is carried out as follows: 

 Inactivated suspected horse serum is added to 

 glanders antigen and active normal horse serum. 

 If the suspected horse serum contains antibodies 

 which unite with the glanders antigen this combina- 

 tion will absorb the horse complement in just the 

 same way that any other antigen antibody combi- 

 nation will. Therefore, if guinea-pig corpuscles sen- 

 sitized with inactive bovine serum are now added, 

 no agglutination of the corpuscles will take place 

 because the horse complement has been destroyed. 

 The tubes are allowed to stand two hours at room 

 temperature before the readings are taken. 



Practical Value of Injections of Anti-Bacterial 

 Sera. We use the term " anti-bacterial " advisedly, 



1 Centralbl. f. Bakt., Orig. Vol. 49, 1909. 



