COMPLEMENTS 353 



Von Liebermann, 1 as the result of his own experiments, came to practi- 

 cally the same conclusions, and advanced the hypothesis that the com- 

 plements of the blood are to be sought for in the soaps of the serum; 

 that these soaps are united with serum albumin, and are inactive until 

 liberated by the amboceptors, when they become actively hemolytic. 



Further than this, it was shown that oleic acid may act as an am- 

 boceptor, and when added to an inactive soap-albumin combination, it 

 would render this actively hemolytic. Von Liebermann and Fenyvessy 2 

 have shown that a mixture of soap, serum, and oleic acid possesses a 

 striking resemblance to complements and amboceptors, and that the 

 amboceptor-complement action is much more than a mere linkage of 

 complement to antigen by means of an amboceptor. These observers 

 suggest that an amboceptor may have an affinity for certain constituents 

 of the cell or bacterial body, and, on the other hand, act upon the com- 

 plement and separate one of its constituents, which then breaks up the 

 cell. These artificial hemolysins, however, completely dissolve the 

 stroma of the corpuscles, whereas the immune hemolysins appear to 

 dissolve out the hemoglobin, leaving the stroma undissolved. As has 

 been mentioned elsewhere, recent work would tend to show that the 

 stroma is also dissolved, at least in part, in specific hemolysis, so that the 

 difference in action between the two is not quite so apparent. 



While the simplicity of the substances concerned in these observations 

 does not harmonize with the great variety and complexity of the im- 

 mune bodies, nevertheless, as Adami has pointed out, the points of re- 

 semblance between artificial and natural complements and amboceptor 

 are so striking that material advances in our knowledge of their nature 

 and action may be gained by further researches into the chemistry of 

 immunity. 



Complement Splitting. During recent years considerable attention 

 has been directed toward a phenomenon known as the splitting of com- 

 plement. It was generally conceded that when treated with hydro- 

 chloric acid (Sachs), carbon dioxid gas (Liefmann), or acid and alkaline 

 phosphates (Michaelis and Skwissky), or when dialyzed against dis- 

 tilled water (Ferrata), complement may be split into two parts, known as 

 a mid-piece and an end-piece. According to certain investigators, these 

 two components of the complement differ in their behavior in hemolytic 

 processes: one, the mid-piece, is bound by the sensitized cells, while 

 the other, or end-piece, possesses the lytic action. Speaking in terms 

 of the side-chain theory, it is just as if the haptophore and cytophilic 



1 Biochem. Zeitschr., 1907, 4. 2 Biochem. Zeitschr., 1907, 5. 



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