18 ANAPHYLAXIS AND ANTI-ANAPHYLAXIS 



tisation to horse serum. In order to succeed better 

 in this, according to these authors the animals should 

 be thus fed over a long period of time, a single inges- 

 tion not being sufficient. Personally, we have not 

 succeeded in sensitising guinea-pigs under these con- 

 ditions. A priori the thing seems possible, and 

 perhaps this is the explanation of those frequent and 

 particularly violent serum symptoms which Russian 

 practitioners have pointed out as occurring in Tartars, 

 because, as is well known, the diet of this race often 

 consists of horse-flesh.^ 



Let us call to mind tha^ in the report which he 

 presented to the International Medical Congress held 

 in London in 191 3 Charles Richet stated that " ex- 

 perimental ahmentary anaphylaxis is difficult to 

 bring about under conditions of healthy digestion, 

 since it is a question of toxalbumins or nutritive 

 albumins, either because the digestive juices actively 

 intervene in transforming these albumins and ren- 

 dering them innocuous, or because the individual is 

 immunised against them — at all events, because he 

 passes a minimal quantity of unchanged albumin." 



Without coming to any conclusion as to the nature 

 of sensitisation, we fully appreciate the fact that an 

 antibody is produced during the process of sensitisa- 

 tion. We propose to term this antibody sensi- 

 biligen. 



The sensibiligen of serum, when the latter is suit- 

 ably diluted — ^it should always be diluted when a 

 rapid sensitising effect is sought — ^is resistant to high 

 temperatures. Thus a serum which is diluted one in 

 a hundred is resistant to temperatures which much 

 exceed that of coagulation. Serum may be heated 



^ Rist and Richet, junior (quoted by Charles Richet in " Ana- 

 phylaxie," p. 77), have noticed that patients feeding on raw 

 horse-flesh react more rapidly than do normal subjects to a sub- 

 cutaneous (antituberculous) injection of horse serum. 



