390 INFECTION AND IMMUNITY. 



The anaphylactic antibody is thermostabile as 

 are precipitins and agglutinins. That is, it resists 

 a temperature of 56 C. for one-half hour. 

 The Role of Michaelis and Fleischmann observed that dur- 

 Ana- ing and after anaphylactic shock the serum of the 

 an ^ ma ^ became poor in complement. Sleeswijk 

 found that following the second antigen injection, 

 complement began to disappear after five minutes, 

 and this disappearance became marked in thirty 

 minutes. In cases in which death took place 

 quickly and complement disappearance was not 

 yet far advanced a further disappearance could be 

 found by allowing the serum to stand for a while 

 in the test tube. 



That the disappearance of complement is in 

 itself not responsible for the anaphylactic shock 

 is shown in two ways : first, the injection of com- 

 plement before or after the second antigen injec- 

 tion does not prevent shock, and secondly in most 

 rapidly fatal shock, death takes place before com- 

 plement has disappeared to any extent. Friedber- 

 ger and Hartoch have also shown that injection of 

 complement-binding salt solution inhibits ana- 

 phylactic symptoms, when it is injected before the 

 second injection of antigen (see Chapter on Com- 

 plement Deviation). 



In order to study further the relation of com- 

 toxin. p} emeir j. to anaphylaxis, Friedemann sensitized 

 rabbits to ox-blood corpuscles and then added 

 inactivated serum from these rabbits to ox erythro- 

 cytes in the test-tube. He found that when com- 

 plement was added to such a mixture, it became 

 toxic and capable of producing anaphylactic symp- 

 toms. By preventing complement binding, by 



