THE PRECIPITINS AND THEIR ANTIBODIES 2/3 



from a rabbit, which had been actively immunised against 

 crotin, gave a very dense precipitate with this substance, 

 a precipitate not produced with normal serum. Myers 

 showed that various albuminous bodies (Witte pepton, crys- 

 tallised egg-albumen, serum globulin) injected into rabbits 

 produced precipitins in their serum which acted upon the 

 corresponding albuminous bodies in experiments in vitro}- 



"If this reaction in vitro" Bashford continues, "be 

 comparable to the action in the body, then the injection 

 of a solution of Witte pepton into the ear-vein of such an 

 immunised animal should result in death from embolism." 

 " The injection very slowly, however, of 5 c.c. 20 per 

 cent Witte pepton into the ear-vein "of a highly immu- 

 nised rabbit " gave no symptoms." " The reactions in vitro 

 and in corpore are here again different. Also in the case 

 of a rabbit immunised against crotin ; direct injection of 

 my albumin-containing crotin-solution had no consequence 

 which I could observe." As we have seen before (p. 205), 

 the equation of equilibrium for ricin and antiricin is not of 

 the same form, if we investigate the action of this poison 

 on red blood-corpuscles in vitro and in living animals. 

 From this circumstance we must conclude that there are 

 different poisons acting in the two cases. Ehrlich 2 and 

 Robert 3 supposed that the two poisons were identical, and 

 used this hypothesis as a basis for theoretical deductions. 

 But now it is well known that this hypothesis is wrong. 



Even for tetanolysin and corrosive sublimate Bashford 

 found a different action in vitro and in vivo. Haemolysins, 



1 Myers : Centralbl.f. Bakteriologie, 28 (1900). 

 2 Ehrlich: Fortschritte de Medidn, 15. 41 (1897). 



3 Robert: Arbeiten des pharmakologischen Instituts zu Dorpat, Tome 8 

 (cited from Bashford). 

 T 



