148 APPLIED IMMUNOLOGY 



Torrey, in animal experimentation, has found that the 

 antibodies in immunized rabbits begin to disappear 

 after ten days, and that the ehmination is practically 

 complete by the fiftieth day in all cases, disappearing 

 much earlier in many instances. Thus a patient, evi- 

 dencing a positive reaction two months after presumed 

 clinical cure, should be regarded as still harboring a 

 latent gonorrhceal focus. Such experience, adopted 

 either as routine procedure in the management of 

 treatment, or discovered accidentally when gonor- 

 rhceal infection or its symptoms were denied, or dem- 

 onstrated by submitting suspected or positive syphi- 

 litic serum to the gonococcus-fixation test, has been 

 encountered in a large number of cases. 



Because of the generally acknowledged difficulties, 

 at times, of differentiating the pelvic lesions in women, 

 notably certain of the inflammatory from the cystic 

 and neoplastic conditions, and also the differential 

 diagnosis among gonorrhoeal, tuberculous and pyo- 

 genic infections themselves, the gonorrhoeal-fixation 

 test seems destined to play a role. As in the male, in 

 whom a positive reaction seems never to occur, at least 

 so long as the infection is confined to the anterior 

 urethra, so in the female we have been unable to obtain 

 a positive reaction unless the disease has ascended to 

 the level of the uterus. 



An interesting, if not important, feature connected 



